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54 


50 Cents 


Xovcll’s lintcrnational Series 


My First Love and 
My Last Love 

BY 

MRS. J. H. RIDDELL 

Author of “ Princess Sunshine,” “ A Struggle for Fame,” Etc. 


tAuthoriieii Edition 


NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

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Every work in this series is published by arrangement with the author. 


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MY FIRST LOVE AND MY 
LAST LOVE 




Xoveire irntcrnatlonal Series, Ifto. 164, 


MY FIRST LOVE AND MY 
LAST LOVE 


BY ^ 

MRS. J. H. RIDDELL 

AUTHOR OF 

“ PRINCESS SUNSHINE,” “ A STRUGGLE FOR FAME,” ETC. 


0 


Authorised Edition 


iUL 23 1392 




NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 


^>5 






Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY. 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


CHAPTER L 


OUR FIRST MEETING. 


AM sitting alone in my chambers, holding in 



I my hand a miniature. It is the likeness of 
a child — My First Love. 

Above the mantelpiece hangs an oil painting. It 
is the portrait of a woman — M y Last Love. 

The wliole of my life — my real life, I mean, not 
that which I lead when I am talking in court with- 
my gown and wig on — or when I am at home with 
my children, now grown up about me, and my wife, 
still a handsome woman, embroidering a pair of 
i^lippers, which can only be intended for wear in 
the next world, since there seems no reasonable pro- 
bability of their being ever finished in this — not my 
life as it appears when I am telling my best after- 
dinner stories, or poring over the briefs which now, 


1 


2 


nfV FIRST LOVE. 


quicker than I w'ant them, are sent to me hy com- 
plaisant solicitors — not my outward and visible life 
that I pass amongst my fellows, but the real exist- 
ence I spend with mj^self and my memory — has 
been influenced, coloured, shaded, by these two faces. 
Not more utterly were the ivory and the canvas 
changed by the painter’s brush tracing the portraits 
of child and woman on them, than has my life been 
made what it is by the first love, and the last love 
which these likenesses recal. 

Recal ! I have written and will not cancel the 
word ; but oh ! friends, the memory of all I hoped, 
of all I possessed, of all I lost, of all I suffered, is 
never so far away from mo as to need any extraneous 
circumstances, any efforts of mind, to bring back to 
remembrance. 

At any moment, whether I am amongst my fel- 
lows, or alone with my papers and books, I can 
whisper in the ear of that long ago time. It has 
never died to me. In my musty chambers a frag- 
rance of the primroses and the violets that studded 
bank and copse in those blissful spring days, is 
wafted to me. Amid the roar of the London traffic 
I hear like a stiff small voice the murmur of the 
river, the gentle rustling of the wind amongst the 
topmost branches of the trees. When my blinds are 
down and my lamp liglitcJ, I can see the field paths 
untrodden for a quarter )f a century — the church in 
the distance — the children gathering wild flowers, 
aye, the very brambles growing by the wayside. 

Sometimes in my dreams the burden of years 


OUR FIRST MEETING. 3 

drops off, and with no knowledge as to what the 
future might hold for me, I wander through the 
woods hand-in-hand with one who loved to look for 
the blue bonnets’ nest in the quick-set hedge, to 
gather the earliest apple pie and meadow sweet that 
grew so abundantly beside the little stream where 
once we beheld a kingfisher who was wont to make 
for herself parasols, and swords, and butterfly cages, 
out of the rushes which thrive in the piece of moor- 
land that stretched between our cottage and the old 
mill. 

I feel the sunshine dazzling my eyes, and the 
warm touch of the little fingers thrust into mine. 
I look down and I see the child with her fair hair, 
and her white skin, and her clear guileless blue eyes. 
Thei-e is a sound of running water — a twittering of 
birds amongst the trees — and then I wake to find 
what was once the reality of my existence, is now its 
romance — that like the days of my youth, the love 
of my youth is mine no more, and that though I 
were to revisit those scenes where I passed all the 
happiest part of my life, I could never look upon 
them with the same eyes again as I did in the years 
the events of which seem all to be enacting over 
again as I sit, as I have said, on this Christmas Eve, 
looking at the miniature of a child — My First Love. 

Oh, dear love, how well I remember that scorch- 
ing Midsummer s-day when we became acquainted ; 
and as I recollect that your eyes wei e full of tears 
caused by the childish trouble out of which I tried 
to help, my own brim over at the thought that the 


4 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


lasli time we met you were weeping — for very grati- 
tude and thankfulness you said, da'^Ung — but your 
cheeks were pale and worn, love, by reason of the 
sorrow which had preceded that relief. 

It all comes back to me not as a memory, but as a 
presence — there winds the country lane shaded by 
trees — I am approaching the bridge that spans the 
stream where such fine trout, all speckled and glis- 
tening, hide themselves beneath the stones, or dart 
after the insects which settle for an instant on the 
water. The parapet of the bridge is low on the 
one side, and I can see the soft rich country land- 
scape steeped in the summer sunshine with the river 
— so low that one could almost cross it dryshod, for 
the bed is full of gravel and flint rocks, and large 
stones washed down by the winter’s floods — trickling 
leisurely on its way. The wall on the other side is 
higher, and so covered with ivy, which has been 
trained to form a hedge on the top, that I cannot 
obtain even a peep into the grounds it conceals ; but 
when I have nearly crossed the bridge, I hear a 
sudden cry, followed by bitter sobs, and a scream in 
a stronger voice for help. 

“ Hillo !” I shouted, in reply. 

** Oh ! come — oh ! please, please, do !” and thus en- 
treated, I jumped over the low fence on the other 
side of the bridge, ran over the sloping green field 
to the water’s edge, and was picking my steps under 
the arch as best I could, when two children called 
out simultaneously with breathless anxiety, 

“ Tbore — thore — stop it.” 


OUR FIRST MEETING, 


S 


The “ it,” was a bag — reticule is, I believe, the more 
correct term — floating past on a little current it had 
managed to get into. Where I was standing, the 
water scarcely seemed to ripple, but on the other 
side of the arch the stream really flowed rapidly, 
and before I could even strive to seize the bag, it 
was beyond my reach. For full five minutes I pur- 
sued that thing which seemed almost endued with 
life, so persistently did it elude all my attempts to 
capture it ; but at length, when it caught in a bram- 
ble, the long straggling branches of which dipped 
into the stream, I succeeded in recovering the lost 
treasure. 

It was hardly worth the wetting I got, or, at least, 
I thought so, as I looked at the dripping morsel of 
finery. It was knitted with fine blue purse silk, 
lined with white satin, and trimmed with blue cord 
and tassels, and the reader may consequently imagine 
what an effect the water had produced upon it. Re- 
ticules were the fashion in those days — if tight 
dresses remain in, the impossibility of pockets will 
bring them into fashion again before another Christ- 
mas comes round, and the wonderful pouches which 
my wife occasionally exhibits — declaring they be- 
longed to her great grandmother — heaven forgive 
her the implication — will come in for the girls who 
may be induced to use them, if only to prove they 
had a gr^t grandmother. 

Whether or not, however, the partner of my joys 
can recollect reticules being commonly carried, my 
a^e and memory enable me to do so, and as I held 


5 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


the dripping article at arms* length, and watched the 
April shower it flung on the stream, I l.oew it 
would never be fit to show its face in polite society 
again. 

However, that was not my fault. I had done 
everything possible, and got very wet into the bar- 
gain, and I did not expect any further demands to 
be made upon my gallantry, when suddenly J oan — 
my sister — one of .the children who had been making 
such an outcry, exclaimed, 

“ And now, Tom, how are we to dry it ?” 

I had reached the pair by this time — they were 
standing on a little promontory of gravel that 
stretched out into the stream— and looking down 
what seemed to me an immense distance — for I was 
tall of my age, and she but a wee bit of a thing — I 
saw for the first time Rose Surry, who, stretching 
out both her little hands for the bag, said, with her 
eyes full of tears, and her poor little heart still beat- 
ing like that of a frightened bird — “ Oh, sir, thank 
you very very much !” 

To Joan, I was only her big brother back from 
school for the holidays, but to this child I was a 
stranger, and something like a man, and her manner 
had that charming hesitancy and shyness about it, 
which to me is just as delicious in a child as in a 
woman, and which seems doubly delicious now-a- 
days when neither women nor children ai^ either 
hesitating or shy. 

A fragile little creature, dressed all in white — she 
wore a soft white sun- bonnet, and a white muslin 


OUR FIRST MEETING, 


7 


pelerine tiimmed with lace, she had lighi cashmere 
boots, the toes of which were tipped with still lighter 
coloured leather, and she looked altogether as though 
she were just turned out of some dainty box lined 
with silver and tissue paper. Not a speck, not a 
soil on boots or dress. 

Dolly, robed in state, and kept from contact with 
ordinary humanity, was never more immaculate 
than the little lady who thanked me with so inno- 
cent a grace, and looked at the drenched reticule so 
pitifully. 

“ How are we to dry it, Tom T my sister repeated, 
and as she spoke I looked at her. 

Now people said Joan Luttrell was pretty, and 
the making of a handsome girl ; but for my part I 
must say she. never in those days struck me as 
being other than a dark-haired, dark-eyed, gipsy- 
looking hoyden. She was not more than twelve 
years of age, yet she could fish, she could shoot, she 
could rob an orchard (ours), she could ride our 
youngest colt bare-backed, she could walk across 
the race, which supplied our mill, over a plank turned 
up on edge, she could climb trees, she could play 
marbles, she could eat more apples than all my 
brothers put together, and she was, in short, to 
quote ihe opinion of an old Scotchman in my fa- 
ther’s employ, ‘‘ The biggest deevil ever ran.” 

It was upon this, the eldest daughter of an im- 
poverished race, I looked, after feasting my eyes 
upon the spotless little maiden with the golden 
hair, 


8 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


There were nine of us — nine of us to be fed and 
clothed — so it may readily be imagined that Joan’s 
dress in no respect resembled that of Miss Surry. 
Joan wore an old silk skirt, which ] well remem- 
bered as an ancient follower of our family. She 
had on, likewise, a black satin spencer, a sun-bonnet, 
made out of some cheap coloured print, and shoes 
fastened by a strap round the ancle. To say that 
Joan’s personal appearance would have been im- 
proved by a thorough good wash, conveys but a 
small idea of her state. A gold-digger labouring 
in a perfectly fresh claim would have looked bright 
as silver by comparison with my sister. You could 
have tracked every mile of country she had been 
through by the different sorts of mud she wore 
upon her dress, like trophies. As usual, her hands 
were gloveless — also, as usual, her bonnet was a 
shapeless mass of calico — further, as usual, per- 
fectly unconscious of, and careless concerning her 
own shortcomings, whilst fully alive to the per- 
plexities of others, she asked, for the third time — 

" How can we dry it, Tom ?” 

“We had better hang it on a branch in the sun,” 
I answered. 

“ That will not be half quick enough,” Joan de- 
clared. “ Can’t we light a fire ?” 

“ By the time we had done that the bag would be 
dry,” I replied— “ besides, I have no matches.” 

“ I could soon run home and get a few,” Joan sug- 
gested. 

• Could you not tf^ke the bag at the same time ?” 


OUR FIRST MEETING. 


9 


I suggested — " Peggy would dry it before the kitchen 
fire." 

“ Well thought of, Tom,” Joan cried, clapping her 
sun-bumt hands like a schoolboy. “ Give me the 
bag, and you stay with Rosie.” 

But at this point Rosie interfered — Joan must 
not go — the bag could be hung up and dried in the 
sun — she was afraid to let it out of her sight again 
— “ If mamma knew, she would be so angry — so 
angry,” and the poor little face began to work, and 
the lips to quiver, and the blue eyes to fill, and she 
clung to Joan as if there were safety and protec- 
tion in the presence of her desirable-looking play- 
fellow. 

“ Shall I take it home ?” I asked. 

Considering I was but a lad, though a tall one, 
and that Rose Surry was only a little child, the 
reader will, I am sure, consider the offer to cany a 
dripping bag magnanimous. But even this my new 
acquaintance declined — rather, she took my hand, 
shyly, it is true, but still confidingly, and asked me 
also to remain. 

Through the years, my darling, I am glad to think 
I did. It seems like yesterday that I was hanging 
the bag to the branch of an alder tree, and spreading 
the handkerchief it contained on the grass by the 
river side, with a stone at each comer, to prevent 
the light summer wind carrying it away. As I cross 
the stream, in order to reach the alder, I see the 
trout darting under the overhanging bank, where 
brambles, and grass, and weeds, dipped into the 

3 


lo MV FIRST LOVE. 

water. Tncre is a quiet stillness and silence all 
around ; the cattle are lying in a newly-mown mea- 
dow, chewing the cud ; in the further fields the 
haymakers are resting from their labour, and lying 
with their straw hats over their faces, or drinking 
beer under the shade of the hedgerows. 

For ourselves, we find a cool place near the bridge, 
and sit down on the bank, with our feet resting on 
the gravel below. Joan has the bulk of the con- 
versation to herself, and talks of many things, with 
the air of a professional — more especially, she en- 
larges upon the merits of some tame rabbits who 
have the misfortune to call her mistress, and des- 
cants on the exquisite beauty of a pair of bantams 
in a manner which makes Miss Surry open her eyes 
with eagerness and delight. 

Further, Joan speaks at length about the per- 
fections of a swing, out of which she has, to my 
certain knowledge, nearly broken her neck on no 
less than four occasions since my return home, and 
finally she produces a handful of cheiTies, that I 
well know could only have been procured at the 
risk of life and limb, and, dividing them into three 
portions, presents Bose with the "one over,” and 
tells her not to let them touch her white dress. 

After this we sit in silence for a time, solemnly de- 
vouring the spoil. I think about how soon my 
holidays will be ended, and fall into a reverie con- 
cerning some words my father let drop that very 
morning. Rose’s mind, I fancy, is wandering off to 
her bag ; and as for Joan, her brain is plotting how 


OUR FIRST MEETING, 


IX 


she can safely procure a fresh supply of cherries, 
while she chucks the stones into the stream, and 
tries vainly to hit a bird perched amongst the ivy, 
who regards her missiles and her endeavours with 
the coolest indifference. 

Oh ! happy noontide ! Oh ! happy . past ! Oh ! 
river rippling idly by — how is it ye may never, for 
ever more, bear to me any treasures save those of 
memory ? Oh ! banks, woods, and hedgerows, gay 
with flower and blossom for the children, who with 
shouts and laughter, pluck your roses and gather 
your May, I could weep to think that never a spring 
nor summer may come upon the earth that shall 
bring to me aught save the withered garlands of a 
long ago past — faded leaves of the blue forget-me- 
not, that have been pressed in the innermost re- 
cesses of my heart, till my life has received their 
colour and their form, and can take no other im- 
print. 

Amongst the stones the water trickled slowly on 
its way — in the distant fields the haymakers arose 
and resumed their toil and their labour until the 
evening — bright butterflies darted across the river, 
and great bees broke with their hum the silence of 
that summer’s day — and Joan, having finished her 
cherries, picked her way across the stream, and re- 
ported that the bag was “ dry as a bone.” 

“ I can’t get it down, Tom,” she shouted ; " come 
— I am not tall enough to reach the branch — I can 
only just touch the bag.” 

Thus exhorted, I rose, and, as I did so, turned, 

2—2 


12 . 


AfV FIRST LOVE. 


" Who is this lady, Rose ?” I asked. 

Immediately Rose jumped up all in a tremble. 

" It’s mamma — oh ! it’s mamma,” the poor child 
said, with such an unconscious dread in her tone, 
that my heart ached for her ; but she did not begin 
to cry; she turned a little pale, yet stood her 
ground more bravely than from what I had seen of 
her I should have expected. 

“ Rose, what are you doing there ?” asked the 
lady, when she was within about half-a-dozen yards 
of us. 

But Rose neither answered nor moved a. step ; 
and still the lady came on. I can see her now — 
a fine, handsome, magnificently-formed woman, 
dressed in a light-grey silk dress, with a black 
velvet scarf round her shoulders, and a straw bon- 
net, with wild roses outside, and lace and roses at 
each side of her face. 

Looking at the scrap of net, and the beech leaf, 
and the tiny bow of ribbon, which constitutes the 
typical “ bonnet of the period,” wherein my wife at 
this moment makes her appearance, in order to re- 
quest from me ten pounds, it really seems like ro- 
mance, to think that “ such things were,” but hand- 
some women looked well, and will look well in the 
head gear of all times, and to me, then unaccus- 
tomed to such wild luxury in attire, the approach- 
ing vision seemed something very beautiful and 
very terrible. Like Rose, I stood my ground, but 
I doubt whether Rose felt more afraid than I when 
the lady’s glance fell upon me. 


OUR FIRST MEETING. 


13 


" How often, Rose, am I to tell you that I will not 
allow you to wander off in this way. Now never 
let me have to speak to you again about it.” 

**But nurse was busy, mamma, and I was so 
tired.” 

“ Then you wiU have to learn not to be tired,” 
was the quick retort. “ What would your papa say 
if he knew ! had found you here, sitting by the 
river with all sorts of people. You are, perhaps, 
not aware, sir,” she added, turning to me, and utter- 
ing the “ sir” with cutting sarcasm, “ that you are 
at present on Sir Humphry Surry’s grounds, and 
trespassing.” 

" Oh ! mamma I” Rose interrupted before I could 
frame a reply, “ I dropped my bag — your bag I 
mean — into the river, and it floated away — away — 
and he brought it back for me and got so wet. He 
was crossing the bridge when I was swinging it 
about, and it flew out of my hand I do not know 
how” 

With the most perfect patience Lady Surry list- 
ened to this explanation, and at its close she turned 
to me and said — 

" It appears then I have to thank you, and apolo- 
gize for my remark ; but, as you are young, I venture 
to tell you that a service rendered, always seems the 
more valuable when it is not encroached upon after- 
wards.” 

I could not answer a word. I felt choking with 
rage and vexation, so without uttering a reply of 
any kind, I crossed the stream and unfastened the 


H 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


reticule, and having placed the handkerchief which 
Joan brought me within it, returned to the spot 
where Lady Surry stood watching my movements. 

“ Thank you,” she said as she took the bag, and 
I know her tone would have been more civil to any 
one of the haymakers than it was to me. “ And 
this young lady,” if I could only convey the 
slightest idea of Lady Surry’s look as she spoke 
those two words, the reader would better under- 
stand my feelings, “ and this young lady, did she 
aid in the recovery of my reticule also ?” 

"No,” Joan answered defiantly, "I was over 
there,” indicating the field on the opposite side of 
the river, "and I saw her,” pointing to Rose, " and 
I came across.” 

" Perhaps you will have the kindness never to 
come across again,” suggested Lady Surry. 

" You may be very sure I never will,” Joan re- 
torted with flashing eyes, and although I thought 
her speech rude, I must say I admired her courage. 

" Good-bye,” she went on, and she put out her 
brown hand towards Rose just as a man might have 
done. 

It is wonderful what timid creatures will do on 
occasions. Though Lady Surry was standing there 
stern and terrible. Rose buried her little face in 
Joan’s battered sun-bonnet and kissed Joan’s 
mouth, which was stained with cherry juice. 

Seeing this, Lady Surry took her daughter’s arm 
and bade her sharply, " Come away,” but Rose was 
not to be frightened out of her politeness. 


OUR FIRST MEETING. 


15 


“ Good-bye, sir, and thank you,” she said, giving 
me her disengaged hand, the left. 

Next instant the little fingers were jerked out 
of my clasp, and with a haughty inclination Lady 
Surry swept ofi*, dragging her daughter after her. 

We watched them as they went, and could see 
that she was scolding Rose, and occasionally giving 
the arm she held that impatient shake which always 
indicates anger and . temper ; but we could also see 
Rose once half turn back towards us, and wave her 
left hand. 

Then they disappeared into the plantation, and 
Joan, drawing a long breath, said — 

“ Isn’t she a devil, Tom T 

"My dear Joan,” I exclaimed, shocked, "where 
have you heard anything like that ?” 

" I heard papa say it,” she answered quite calmly. 
" He said Lady Surry was a devil — there now. Master 
Tom.” 

I had no reason to doubt the correctness of Joan’s 
assertion, my father was often given to the use of 
language not strictly clerical — as he liimself re- 
marked, he sometimes spoke in French — and I was 
therefore obliged to content myself with saying to 
Joan,. that expressions which it was quite right for 
my father to employ we-e not suitable for her. 

After that we crossed the stream, and went over 
the fields home together. 


CHAPTER n. 

EOSE’s PAEENTa 

W HEN Sir Geoffry Surry lay a-dying, the only 
temporal question which troubled him was 
that without his consent and against his will, a fool 
who had married a rogue should succeed to the 
title 

Let a man be never so strict a conservative — and 
Sir Geoffry was conservative to the back bone — 
there is still enough of the original Adam left in 
him to induce radical tendencies on occasion. 
When an eldest son appears to be posting off to 
Pluto, or the next heir deals too freely in 'post obits, 
original sin crops up in the breast of our prime old 
English gentleman, and he wishes, spite of the laws 
of primogeniture and entail, that he could cut off 
the offender with a shilling, and reward, it may be, 
some prudent sneak with the title, and broad lands, 
and benefits thereto appertaining, and rents there- 
from accruing. 

Now Sir Geoffry was a conservative, but he was 


ROS^S PARENTS. 


17 


also haman, therefore, when he found that he had 
no direct heirs, and that Humphrey Surry must 
nolens volens succeed to the baronetage, he cursed 
his day — made his will — and in due time — which 
to Humphrey seemed a long time — died. 

After the funeral Sir Geoffry’s will was read, and 
then the new baronet discovered that nothing his 
uncle could keep from him was left for his need. 
Old Court and say a paltry fifteen hundred a year 
went with the title, but Grayborough Castle and all 
the broad acres surrounding it, together with about 
six or seven thousand per annum, were bequeathed 
to my dearly beloved brother Gilbert, " who will, I 
trust, in God’s good time succeed to the title.” 

To Sir Humphrey this proved a blow, but to Ma- 
tilda whom he had married, it was worse than a 
blow. In the visions of night she had beheld the 
towers of Grayborough — the deer on the lawn had 
been veiy pleasant possessions to her. It never 
once entered into her mind that Sir Geoffry, though 
he hated her, could visit that hatred on his next of 
kin— for Humphrey, a gentleman every inch, had 
refrained from informing her of the result of his 
only visit to his child! ess uncle. 

You are the first of our race,” said the baronet, 
“who have brought a low-bom woman amongst 
our mothers, wives, and 'daughters. As you have 
made your bed so you must lie on it. If love be 
worth anything it will compensate you for the loss 
of family ties.” 

And then Humphrey Surry turned away, sick at 


I8 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


heart, because he knew that it was not for love of 
him, but for love of his belongings, for love of what 
he might eventually give her, that Matilda Berners 
had married him. 

But as I have before said, he was a gentleman, 
and he kept his own counsel. He had made a mis- 
take, as many a better man has done since, and 
there was no use in cr3dng over spilt milk. Lady 
Surry was Lady Surry, and not all the wills in 
Christendom could mend the fact: so Sir Hum- 
phrey accepted his position, as well as the other fact 
that he was never likely to have any heir to come 
after him. 

These things do happen so now and then amongst 
the upper ten thousand — possibly they happen just 
the same in the lower ten millions, but that pro- 
perty being an unknown quantity amongst the un- 
distinguished many, no one cares to work out the 
difficult algebraic problem, Humphrey Surry’s wife 
bore hbn five sons running— five — no less, to the 
intense disgust of childless Sir Geoffry — for Gilbert 
had only one — a tall undeveloped stripling, at the 
time of his kinsman’s death. 

But the five died one after another, and then, after 
an interval, there was hope of an heir again. When 
the child came it was a daughter, and gossip said, 
Humphrey’s wife turned her face to the wall and 
wept. The same year Sir Geoffry died. Six years 
afterwards, Sir Humphrey, having either paid or ar- 
ranged his debts, came to Old Court with never an 


I^OSE^S PAnENTt, 


19 

heir to inherit the title —but with Lady Surry, whom 
he had married once for love. 

It came about in this wise : Hunting one day 
near Grayborough, Humphrey was thrown and 
badly injured. Kind but not farsighted friends 
canded him to the abode of J. S. Berners, M.R.C.S., 
who saw to his hurts, and who had a handsome 
daughter. From the day he was borne across liia 
threshold the fair Matilda marked him for her own, 
the spoil of her bow and of her spear. 

She was engaged at the time — for such women 
do not lack lovers, more is the pity — to a certain 
Robert Childutt, who farmed a couple of hundred 
freehold acres, and had altogether been looked upi>ii 
by the Berners family as rather a desirable catcli 
for Tilly. But Tilly was above any low considera- 
tions, and regarded the obligations of a promise no 
more, or indeed, rather less than she regarded the 
necessity of curling her hair. 

She knew she was handsome, her glass told her 
that, even had Mr. Childutt in his folly failed to do 
so ; and there, in her father’s first floor back bed- 
room lay a gentleman, heir to a baronetage, lacking 
a wife. Should this thing be suffered in Israel ? 
Should she permit him to go away heart-whole ? 
Assuredly not ; and accordingly, as she, to quote Sir 
Geoffry, was a rogue and Humphrey a fool, they 
made a match of it, and had many children, amongst 
whom Rose was the only one who lived. 

To state that her mother disliked Rose, would 


20 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


bo to convey too mild an idea of her feelings. Sl)c 
hated her. 

“ Had I only known,” Mrs. Surry was overhear* 1 
to say, "I would have managed accordingly, and 
had a boy.” But at the time she never dreamed 
of a girl’s advent, and Rose’s coming was as un- 
locked for as unwelcome. 

Not to her father, however — he did not so much 
mind whether his boy, or Gilbert’s, succeeded to the 
title. Long years of matrimony had done their 
work, and Humphrey Surry was happily indifferent 
as to who or what came after him. 

He had played his game, and failed — for him life 
was over. If only his wife would have left him 
and Rosy alone ! — well, every existence has its “ if 
only,” and Sir Humphrey did not care greatly. He 
was a fool, as his uncle had broadly stated, and 
Providence is very good to fools. Out of the abysses 
of their own folly comfort comes to them — out of 
Sir Humphrey’s abyss there came Rose. 

When his wife was dissatisfied, and creditors 
pressing. Sir Humphrey found a certain pleasure in 
the sight of his daughter’s face — ^in the clasp of her 
childish arms. It is a poor life that in which a man 
disappointed of the chief blessing life can offer— ^a 
woman’s devotion — a woman’s sympathy — tui-ns to 
the affection of the children, who ought merely to 
serve as a tie binding husband and wife closer to- 
gether. 

For me — there will be hundreds, thousands of 
people, this Christmas time, to say I am a heathen 


/BOSS'S PATIENTS. 


21 


for advancinf' the opinion— though my opinion is, 
God knows, the truth — whenever I see a man dis- 
appointed in his marital relations taking comfort 
out of his children, and seeking his companionship 
with them, I always think of a lonely woman I 
broke in upon one morning unexpectedly, and 
found nursing a cat, all the time that her eyes 
— Lord comfort her ! — were fixed upon the fire — 
seeing, it might be, therein the ghost of a dream 
never realized, of a hope never fulfilled. 

After all, there is nothing but a woman can fill 
a man’s heart. 

I know that — I who, now surrounded by wife and 
children, sit beside my Christmas hearth with mine 
empty. 

My love — ^yes — you are my wife, and, according 
to your light, have done your duty, and were you 
to die to-morrow, I should be very, very sorry, and 
never marry again — but you have never filled the 
vacant corner, for all that — never cured the dull, 
aching pain, through the years which have come and 
gone. 

My dears, kiss me ! you are my children — but 
you are not hers. 

If you had, you might have been different, and I 
too. Don’t marry in a hurry, and don’t maiTy ex- 
cepting for love. 

It is not bad Christmas advice this, friends. 
When you are kissing under the mistletoe, young 
folks, remember what I have told you. When you 
see young Corydon, Paterfamilias, decoying youi 


22 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


Phillis under the Druidical branch, be not o-ver- 
ftwifb to advance the claims of that highly respect- 
able other individual, whose suit you approve— ^ut 
rather leave the young folks alone, and if Cory don 
have no grievous sin bearing witness against him, 
can show that he is able and willing to work for 
the support of his wife, in God’s name let them 
marry. 

As the Pharisees in olden times were rebuked 
because they rejoiced at not being as that Publi- 
can, so I always doubt the woman who blesses the 
fate that represents to her shortsightedness the 
Maker of the universe, which interposed to prevent 
her mating with Frank, the ne’er do well — with 
Harry, the black sheep. 

She is fat, and unsentimental, this matron whom 
I remember, full of romance, and with a waist I 
could have spanned ; she has daughters she will 
marry to the highest bidder, and sons she would 
taboo if they made love where there was no pro- 
spect of settlements. But oh ! friends, all holy, 
wholesome, unworldly love is now sour grapes to 
her — and it is but her feminine instinct which 
prompts her to make the best of the mistake, and 
to perpetuate the error. 

Evil, be thou my good ! Mammon, be thou my 
God ! cry these women, who have gone from Dan 
to Beersheba, and found all barren ; and the cry is 
echoed by those who, seeing them outwardly pros- 
perous, and apparently happy, behold the rind of 


I^OSE^S PARENTS, 


n 


the Dead Sea apples, and know nothing of the dust 
and the ashes, the decay and the rottenness, lurking 
within. After which not digression, but statement, 
of opinion, I may return to my story, and tell it. 


CHAPTER III 


OUR VISITOa 

T he courteous and patient reader must not sup- 
pose that I learned all the facts contained in a 
previous chapter in a moment. On the contrary, I 
have concentrated into a few pages the information of 
years. What we knew best at my father s house 
in those days was that the residents at Old Court 
were, for their station, very poor — that Rose s nurse 
had likewise to officiate as Lady Surry’s maid — that 
indoors they could afford in the way of male ser- 
vants only a butler, whilst as regarded the stables, 
coachman and groom — the latter turned occasionally 
into a footman — were the only retainers employed. 

Sir Humphrey had no other country seats, and 
therefore when he went to shoot, was compelled 
to do so at the instance of kindly friends. He sat 
in the House ; but when he went to town was obliged 
either to go without Lady Surry, or else to stay at 
the residence of a widowed sister, who was willing 
to put up with the inconvenience of having them. 


OUR VISITOR, 


25 

for tlie sake of the Bart, and M.P attached to his 
name. Lady Surry flattered the old lady’s vanity. 
She did not snub the pug dogs in Devonshire Place 
as she was wont to do her only child Rose, whom 
she left at Old Court, in charge of an individual 
half housekeeper, half cook. Lady Surry was still 
young enough, and personable enough, to flirt, and 
she did flirt, though unbeknown to Miss SuiTy — 
only, unhappily, nothing came of it. She failed to 
leave Sir Humphrey free, and Sir Humphrey still 
regarded her with consideration, if not with love, 
as ** my young wife,” though Lady Suny was nine- 
and-thirty, if she were a day, having been nearly 
twenty-three when she made her matrimonial ven- 
ture — and won. 

But all this time I am wandering from my tale. 
It was a lovely summer’s evening when, just as we 
were about commencing tea, J oan entered our sit- 
ting-room leading by the hand Rose Surry. 

We were not wealthy people, as has been al- 
ready intimated, so we lived plainly, dining all to- 
gether at one o’clock, and assembling again round 
the tea-table at six — therefore we must have seemed 
quite a party to the child, who drew back a little, 
and would have retreated altogether had Joan not 
dragged her forward. 

"It is Rose Surry,” commenced my sister, "I 
brought her in to tea, mamma.” 

“ But, my dear, you know Lady Surry ** our 

mother was beginning, when a look at the poor little 
tender face cut her short. " Will you sit beside me, 

3 


26 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


love ?” she went on, all her maternal instincts astii 
at sight of the child’s clinging gentleness: “Joan, 
take off her bonnet.” Which J oan did, like a ma- 
tron of forty, finishing up the performance with a 
kiss, and the remark, “ There, my queen.” 

I never beheld anything like Joan’s love for that 
child. She waited upon her like a slave, and would 
have given Rose her own portion of jam, as well as 
that my mother heaped on the stranger’s bread, only 
Rose said she could not eat it. 

And indeed the child ate very little, but after 
the first few minutes seemed, in her quiet way, to 
be supremely happy amongst us all. She took es- 
pecially to my father, sitting on his knee and pulling 
his grey moustache, and laughing merrily when he 
told her she was a saucy little puss, and said she did 
not know her own name. 

“ Rose, indeed — Lily, you mean,” persisted my 
father. 

“Mamma calls me Rose, and papa Posie, and 
nurse Plague,” she explained gravely. 

“ And why Plague ?” asked my mother ; and at 
this question the child lifted her large soft eyes and 
looked at my mother earnestly, but answered never 
a word. 

“ Why Plague, darling T repeated my mother, and 
she stooped down her head to hear the reply. 

Then Rose stretched up her little arms and clasped 
them round my mother’s neck, while she whispered, 
“ Because she never has time to take me oul^ and I 


OUR VISITOR, 


27 


go by myself, and then when she finds me she says 
I am the plague of her life.” 

“ But don’t you think you are naughty to go by 
yourself, and make nurse unhappy V asked my 
father. 

“ No,” she answered. " I have no one to play 
with, and nothing to do ; and then, if I can get to 
the river sometimes I see Joan.” 

“Did you see Joan at the river this evening?” 
my mother enquired — for she had heard the episode 
of Lady Surry’s reticule, and was prepared to rebuke 
Joan if she found that young lady had been break- 
ing rules, and trespassing on Sir Humphrey’s pro- 
perty. 

“Yes,” Joan broke in at this juncture. “I was 
on one side of the bridge, and saw Rosie on the 
other, and called to her, and she came. Her mamma 
is in Wales, and she had been there all the after- 
noon by herself, so I brought her home. You won’t 
catch me going into their place again,” and Joan’s 
voice was uplifted, and Joan’s eyes sparkled, and my 
dear mother said — 

“ You must not speak in such a tone,” and my fa- 
ther exclaimed “ Hush, hush, hush !” 

After that the conversation languished, and it 
was proposed we should all go into the garden, 
where Rose, holding my hand partook of some 
gooseberries which Joan gathered, and subsequently 
recounted for my benefit a fairy tale, considering evi- 
dently that she was bound in courtesy to amuse and 
instruct me. 


8-2 


28 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


We stood in fairy land then, sweetest, though 
neither of us knew it — in the bright, innocent, 
happy, fairy land of youth and inexperience. 

“ Where did that all happen. Rose T I asked 
when she had dont. 

“ I do not know,” she answered, but ever so far 
away from here.'* 

My love, there came a day when I reminded you 
of that fairy-tale, and asked you the same question 
again, and you replied, darling — “ It all happened 
in this garden, Tom, and the prince and princess are 
you and me.” 

“ We did not know anything about love in those 
days, Rose,” I whispered. 

“ Ah ! Tom, we were children then,” you said, and 
God help us, we were little better than children in 
our happiness when you uttered that profound re- 
mark — nothing more, love — wandering along the 
grass paths, which were damp, I remember, and co- 
vered (it was in the early spring time) with blos- 
soms from the apple-trees. 

It was moonlight, and we thought such a moon 
had never sailed through the sky before. For my 
own part, I have not seen such a night since, and 
believe it is a different sky and a different moon from 
that we beheld standing in my father’s garden I 
look up at as I pace back from my chambers to the 
domestic hearth where all my earthly happiness is 
now centred. 

Supposing, however, a man have once lived in 
fairy land, he cannot, even though he be the happy 


OUR VISITOR. 


29 


husband of an estimable wife, and the proud father 
of handsome children, always refrain from dreaming 
dreams and seeing visions. In the midst of the 
prosaic city, before his mental sight there flits ever 
and anon the “ rath” where the “ little people” dwelt 
the green ring where they danced in the summei 
nights. Recollection is always summer to some 
friends. To those who have spent a happy youtl 
the roses of the past bloom perennially — there ifc 
always a perfume of mignonette and pinks, always 
broad patches of sunshine lying athwart the land- 
scape, always a glitter on the sea, leaves on the 
trees, the songs of birds in the air, fruits clustering 
in the orchard. 

The past comes back so to me, God be thanked. 
Though the autumnal breezes blew, and the frosts 
and sorrows of winter came, still my life held bloom 
and flower once, the memory of which no future can 
destroy. And even while my eyes fill while writing 
and thinking of the long ago, it is not with bitter 
tears, but with drops wi’ung from the knowledge 
that although my life might have been less miser- 
able had I never loved and lost, it would have proved 
less happy too. 

After a time my mother came out to spoil Rose’s 
enjoyment. 

“ They will be anxious about you at Old Court, 
pet,” she said, “and I must now send you home. 
Tom, you had better take her.” 

“Let me go too, mamma,” Joan cried, but my 
dear mother negatived that proposal, to my intense 


3o 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


delight — for if I were to run the gauntlet of entering 
Old Court, and proffering an explanation, I did not 
want to do so in J oan’s company. 

Very soon Miss Rose, wrapped up in a warm 
scarf, was trudging with me down the lane home. 
Although our places almost adjoined, the entrance 
gates of Old Court were a good mile from our cot- 
tage, and I had not the slightest intention of taking 
my charge home by any back entrance. She urged 
me to do so, indeed, adding as an inducement the 
fact that " mamma was not at home,” which speech 
gave me but a poor idea of Rosie’s notions on the 
score of morality; whereupon I considered it my 
duty to give her a lecture concerning the sinfulness 
of doing behind a person’s back what she would not 
do before her face — in the middle whereof Rose 
began to whimper, and I to fear I had produced 
too strong an impression. 

“ What is it, dear ?” I asked, for I had not meant 
to be cross with her, only from the height of my 
teens to preach to her inexperience. 

“ I am tired,” she said in reply, “ so tired ! Is it 
very far home now, please ?” 

“ Shall I carry you ?” I proposed. 

“Yes, please,” and the little arms were up- 
stretched, and I took the light burden in mine, and 
so carried her all the remainder of the way to her 
father’s house. She did not go to sleep ; she just 
lay there quietly, looking up at the sky, with her 
bonnet fallen back, and her soft golden hair stirred 
by the evening breeze. 


OUR VISITOR. 


3 * 


“ Do I tire you ?” she asked once ; ** do your arms 
ache r 

“ With carrying you !” I said ; " why you are 
light as a feather, I could carry you from here to 
London.” 

“ I wish you would, then,” she answered, “ 1 
want to see the King and Queen sitting with crowns 
on their heads and fur on their shoulders — mustn’t 
they be grand !” 

“ I am going to London after a time,” I said a 
little proudly, because in those days it was some- 
thing to visit the metropolis. But immediately I 
had spoken my heart sank, for that very day it had 
come to me that I ought not to go ; and I was even 
then making up my mind to do what my father 
wished, at any personal cost, at any personal sacri- 
fice. 

And what he asked was just my future, just that 
and nothing more. Perhaps it would have been 
better had he taken it then altogether, and done 
therewith what he listed. 

“ Is J oan going too ?” Rose asked ; whereupon I, 
being rather in a pedantic frame of mind, undertook 
to prove to her that it was only men who went from 
home, and not little girls, or indeed girls at all (were 
I talking to Rose now on this point, I wonder what 
I should have to tell her), and I enlarged upon this 
theme, until probably Rose wearying of it, told me 
I was not a man, but a boy. 

After that, thinking her a trifle rude, and con- 
sidering that the greater the truth the greater the 


32 


MV FIRST LOVE 


libel, I remained silent, till she brought me back to 
a better state of mind, by saying — 

“ You are not cross, Tom, are you V 

** Cross, Rosie ! no,” I answered ; and then she 
nestled her soft face up against mine, and the shade 
of Sir Humphrey’s trees closed over us as I carried 
her up the avenue home. 

We had not been long in making acquaintance. 
Already I was Tom to the child ; already she was as 
much a part of my life as J oan, or Cecil, or Harry, 
or Ethel, or any of the other progeny residing in 
our unpretentious house. Whatever I might do in 
the future, wherever I might go, I could never 
forget blue eyes and golden hair, who lay in my 
arms with hands clasped round my neck, whispering, 
“ I love you, Tom.” Oh ! my darling. 

I had never been to Old Court before, and the 
shadow which seemed to have flitted thither with 
me deepened in intensity as we drew near Rosie’s 
home. What I was to say, how explain my advent, 
I could not imagine, and we had already reached 
the front door before any suitable form of address 
presented itself. 

Then, while I was waiting for some one to come 
in answer to my knock, I framed this sentence — 

“Miss Surry came home with my sister to tea, 
and thinking the family might be uneasy, I have 
brought her back.” 

But the “ best laid plans o’ mice and men ” fall 
through sometimes, and my sentence fell through 


OUR VISITOR, 


33 


by reason of Rose exclaiming the moment a solemn 
elderly butler opened the door — 

“It is only me, Hoskins,” (the darling’s ac- 
quaintance with Lindley Murray was at that time 
imperfect). “I have been up with Mr. Luttrell’s 
papa and mamma, and I do not want any tea, please 
— I have had my tea. Put me down on the table, 
please, Tom — this last clause to me. 

I crossed the dark old-fashioned hall, and set 
my maiden on a substantial oak table, where she 
curled up her legs, and at once assumed airs of com- 
mand that I could not have believed she had courage 
to indulge in. 

“ Where’s nurse, Hoskins ?” asked Missy, nursing 
her pretty boots. 

“ Crying about you. Miss,” answered the butler ; 
“ she has sent Garnett to look for you, thinking you 
were lost.” 

“ Lost !” repeated the autocrat, contemptuously, 
“ why how could I be lost, Hoskins ? I must always 
be somewhere.” 

“ Which you must. Miss,” argued Hoskins. 

“ I am going now,” I broke in at this juncture ; 
“ will you bid me good night ?” I said this very 
humbly, for the house and the man servant, who, I 
fancied, looked as if he knew something greatly to 
my disadvantage, had proved too much for my 
equanimity. There was a gulf placed between us 
and these people who owned Rose, and no one save 
J oan — J oan, in her mad disregard of consequences, 
— would have tried to cross it. 


M 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


** Good night, Tom,” answered Rose, holding up 
her mouth to be kissed, but at that moment a side- 
door flew open, and a woman appeared, who em- 
braced Rose, calling her “ duck, and pet, and lamb, 
and treasure,” and asking “ where she had dropped 
from,” adding, “ poor nursey has been crying her 
eyes out.” 

“ Why don’t you say I am the plague of your 
life V asked Rosie, solemnly. 

“ Because, my sweet lamb, I thought you were 
really lost this time. I have been out the last two 
hours looking for you, and now Garnett is gone.” 

“ To walk with Phoebe,” flnished Rose, with that 
demure archness which belongs to the sex, when 
speaking about love affairs, long before they have 
attained to the knowledge of good and evil 

Once again I essayed to get away, but Rosie 
held me fast, while she introduced me to her nurse 
with the words, “ He brought me home.” 

“ And I am sure, sir, it was very kind of you in- 
deed, and we are all obliged, and where, please, did 
you find Miss Rose ?” 

“ Find !” repeated Miss Rose ; “ I never went to 
any place to be found — Joan took me to her home 
for tea — that was all.” 

“ My sister is very fond of Miss Surry,” I ex- 
plained, ‘‘ but she ought not to have tempted her 
away from home.” 

“ I wish my lady would let Miss Rose have any- 
body to play with,” the nurse answered ; “ for the 
child is moped up and lonely here all day by her- 


OUR VISITOR. 


35 


self” — and from this speech I knew that Rosie’s 
guardian, in her mother’s absence, would not even 
try to prevent the pair meeting. And after all, 
what did it matter wliether they did or not, so long 
as it was Rosie, who, like a stray pheasant, wandered 
into my father’s grounds from Sir Humphrey’s plan- 
tations ? 

“ You would like to return by the river walk, 
should you not, sir ?” said Hoskins, as I passed 
through the hall-door. “I will get you the key of 
the gate leading on to the bridge, and you can send 
it back any time. That way saves full three quar- 
ters of a mile.” 

But I declined this offer, telling him I should 
like the walk, and so I passed down under the arch- 
ing trees that made the avenue dark and lone- 
some. 

It was not too dark and lonesome, however, for 
Miss Phoebe and Mr. Garnett, whom I met strolling 
lovingly along together — she with her head almost 
touching his shoulder, he with his arm passed round 
her waist. 

I should not have thought it necessary to disturb 
their tete-a-tete had Garnett himself not called out 
to know who I was, and what I was doing there at 
that time of night. 

In reply, I informed him I was returning from 
the Gourt, having just taken Miss Surry back 
there. 

“ It will be a relief to you to know she is safe, and 
that you need not trouble yourself to look for her 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


36 

any longer,” I added, whereupon Phoebe giggled, and 
Mr. Garnett muttered something about having heard 
at the Lodge that a gentleman had brought her 
home. 

When I got near our own house, my father met 
me, smoking, as was his wont, a short pipe, cigars 
being a luxury our means did not permit. 

“ Well, my boy,” he began, after we had walked 
a few steps together, “ will you consider what I 
said to you this morning — carefully, Tom, remem- 
ber r 

" I have considered, father,” I answered, " and T 
have decided to stay at home and try and do my 
best.” 

He took a whiff or two more before he said, laying 
his hand on my shoulder, 

" God bless you, Tom.” 


CHAPTER lY* 


OUB OWN HOME, 


OOKING back over the past, with eyes that are 



I I now sharpened by knowledge of the world, I 
do not wonder at Lady Surry considering us very 
common people, who had no right to come between 
the wind and her nobility. 

We were not rich, and although we were of re- 
spectable family, there had never, so far as I know, 
been any member composing it very gi'eat or very 
grand. Of course there had been a time in our an- 
nals, as there is usually a time in the annals of 
those who can talk confidently about a great grand- 
father, when the Luttrells were well-to-do — when 
they owned a fair amount of landed property, asso- 
ciated with county gentry, and rode to the meet of 
the Darfordshire hounds, on their own hacks, and 
cried “ Tally Ho !” from the backs of their own 
huntei’s. 

They had a pretty, old-fashioned mansion, away 
in Daifordshire. I have seen it within the last ten 


38 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


years — surrounded by hideous gardens, laid out 
principally in the Dutch style — where the flower- 
beds were bordered by box, and the old yew trees 
artistically trimmed into the similitude of peacocks, 
lions, griffins, and other animals. 

The propei*ty is now in the possession of a very 
worthy knight, who was at one time Lord Mayor 
of London, and who made all his money in trade. 
He has thrown out wings, and added many architec- 
tural abominations, but he had the sense to leave 
the old house overgrown with ivy intact, and he 
still nourishes the yew trees, and has them trimmed 
and cut as above described— under the impression, 
perhaps, that people may think his ancestors planted 
them. 

Not that it matters much who planted them now, 
or if they had never been planted, for that matter, 
but they please Sir William, and constituted one 
great reason why he purchased the place. His 
yearly income is larger than the entire principal of 
the Luttrells in their palmiest days, so I have good 
reason for saying that even in the heyday of their 
prosperity my people were never anything very 
particular. 

They belonged to the rank-and-file of the upper 
middle-class. With either wealth or brains, they 
might have become colonels, generals, commander- 
in-chiefs in that social army — but they had neither. 
They had not even sense enough to go into trade, 
which was, perhaps, so far fortunate, since, with 
their lack of cleverness, commerce would infallibly 


OUR OWN HOME, 


39 


have hurried them even quicker down the hill than 
they posted of their own accord. 

I know a certain Luttrell now, one of the lineal 
descendants of the Darfordshire family — not a mere 
offshoot of that race, like myself — who is something 
in a Government office, and who barely earns enough 
to keep himself, and a delicate wife, and three sickly- 
looking children, off the parish. 

This man has no money beyond his salary, and 
never had any — neither had his father before him, 
neither had his wife, nor his wife’s father. His an- 
cestors were no greater folk than I have described 
them — he has no land — he has no particular posi- 
tion — and he grows nothing but an imbecile mous- 
tache, which looks a degree more purposeless than 
himself. Yet he never fails to tell me on those not 
rare occasions, when he wants the loan of a five- 
pound note, that no gentleman should go into 
business. 

“ It is only fit for snobs and cads,” he declares ; 
and were he not such a poor creature, I should be 
unable to refrain from telling him, “ It is certainly 
not fit for fools.” 

For me, I am not in trade ; I have never been, but 
for a very short period of my life. Yet I hold trade 
to be as necessary to the very existence of a true 
aristocracy, as food to that of a man. For a pauper 
aristocracy is in its very nature an anachronism, 
and I should like to know how, except in trade, or 
by trade, sufficient money is now-a-days to be ob- 
tained to keep blue blood circulating through the 


40 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


social system. Men cannot go freebooting, or maraud- 
ing, or looting now, excepting in business, and it 
is quite a question, I think, whether even a modern 
" promoter ” is not quite as respectable and honest 
a member of society as a “ Reiver ” used to be in 
the good old days when “ might was right.” 

All of which merely brings me to the point I 
wanted to reach long ago, namely, that had the Lut- 
terells been clever enough to turn their attention to 
commerce, and amass wealth — without, at the same 
time, losing all command over their H s — even 
Lady Suny might have been disposed to make her- 
self agreeable. 

But we were poor, and, however novelists and 
poets may idealize poverty, there is nothing so 
awfully prosaic as a small income and nine fine 
children. 

People were, indeed, kind enough to hint we 
were fine children, but that only made the matter 
worse, for our good health induced large appetites 
while the animal spirits of the younger fry were for 
ever leading them into places where they tore their 
clothes, and whence they returned home sorry, 
ragged sights to behold. 

In his early days my father had been an officer. 
It was quite like the Luttrells, to put their sons in 
positions where they could not possibly live on the 
pay allotted to them. The Luttrells, and such as 
they, replenish the earth with curates, ensigns, 
briefless barristers — who write for the press — civil 
servants, secretaries, and so forth, and in conformity 


OUR OWN HOME, 


41 


with the plan of his family, and their tribe, m}? 
father entered the army. 

After he married Bertha Harrison, who, of course, 
had not a sixpence, he sold out, paid his debts, and 
looked about for employment in London, which he 
failed to get. Time went by — children came, but 
money went ; and had it not been for the kindness 
of a widowed aunt, who lived in great splendour in 
Queen Anne Street, with a maid, a cook, a footman, 
a housemaid, a butler, a cat, a parrot, a King Charles 
and an Italian greyhound, there can be no question 
but that a climax would have arrived sooner than 
actually proved the case. 

But though deferred, the climax came, and, at tht 
earnest invitation of George, by the grace of God 
my father found himself seated one evening at Mr. 
Sloman’s hospitable board, inditing an epistle first 
to his aunt, and secondly to a certain Colonel Mont- 
gomery, who had always been his great chum, and 
who, it wa.s whispered, had run an almost neck- 
and-neck race with him in Bertha Harrison’^ good 
graces. 

Be this as it may, both Colonel and aunt came to 
the rescue, and somehow affairs were arranged. After 
that, however, came the important question as to 
how he was to live, and Colonel Montgomery offered 
him the lease of a farm which had just fallen in, near 
Crommingford, without any fine, which offer being 
gratefully accepted, Mrs. Graham agreed to lend 
nim one thousand pounds to stock it, and thus en- 

4 


42 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


abled to begin the world afresh, my father turned 
his back on London. 

He would have done well, I think, at Cromming- 
ford, but for two, or, indeed three, drawbacks ; the 
first was, that my mother knew nothing whatever 
of the duties of lier new position, and never could 
learn them, wherefore the making of the butter, the 
manufacturing of the cheese, the rearing of the 
calves, the care of the poultry, was left entirely to 
servants. 

There was no mistress’s eye about our establish- 
ment to put meat on the horse’s ribs — and indeed 
how could there be ? said my poor father once to 
me, almost apologetically, when she was constantly 
bringing children into the world ? 

Which was all very well and very nice of him to 
recollect ; but I know now quite well that if my 
mother had never had a child, she would have 
proved just as useless a wife for a struggling farmer 
as was the case. 

The second drawback to my fathei’s prosperity 
— I will not say happiness, because it would grieve 
me to think he had been otherwise than happy — 
were the number of arrows contained in his matri- 
monial quiver : think of it — there were nine of us, 
and I but sixteen. ' 

Three, two older and one younger than mysell*, 
had died ; but there were nine living — nine, and 
Joan the eldest girl. It was a blessing we lived in 
the country, and were, so to speak, our own trades- 
people, for had we resided in a town, and been com- 


OUR OWN HOME, 


43 


pelled to buy bread, and milk, and beef, and beer, it 
would have taken a fortune to support us. As it 
was, we fattened and throve, and there was neither 
sickness within our house, nor scarcity within our 
gates. 

But there was a trouble, which arose in this way, 
and caused my father many and many a sleepless 
night and wretched day. 

On the farm at Crommingford there were two 
small flour mills, one that had happily been burnt 
permitted to fall into ruin, and another that, unfor- 
tunately, was in a perfect state of repair. 

At the time he took possession of the farm, the 
latter mill was rented by a man of the name of Telfer, 
who managed in a small way to make a living out of 
it. When he died, my father took the mill into his 
own hands, and worked it not unprofitably. Tn an 
evil hour, however, some one suggested to him, or 
the idea suggested itself, that two mills might be as 
easily worked as one, and that it was a thousand 
pities for the water-wheel on the lower pond to be 
standing still. He had got a little money before 
him by this time, and so commenced building. 

Now everybody knows what commencing build- 
ing means, namely the commencement of trouble , 
and so my father found it. An acquaintance had 
assured him that the place might be put into work- 
ing order again for an old song ; but the song turned 
out ultimately a most mournful ditty. Further, 
when the mill was rebuilt, my father discovered 
that the same rule holds good with regard to busi- 


44 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


n^s as with regard to hens. Say that six hens lay 
on an average two eggs a week each, any inexpe- 
iericed person might assume that thirty-six would 
produce six dozen — but practically this is found to 
be a fallacy ; and in like manner the profits obtained 
by a man in a large way of business bear no propor- 
tion whatever to the amount made by one trading 
in a smaller and more modest manner. 

Moreover the rebuilding and fitting up cost him 
just double what he had anticipated, and as if to 
crown his misfortunes within a month of the time 
when he had, as he thought, made a most desirable 
arrangement, which would give him time to pay 
the people to whom he owed money, down came a 
letter from Mrs. Graham’s solicitors, demanding the 
return of the thousand pounds she had lent him ten 
years previously. 

“ That is because we would not let her have 
Joan,” said my mother tearfully, for Mrs. Graham 
had desired my charming sister as an addition to her 
olio of oddities. 

"I scarcely think so,” answered my father, and 
he wrote to the solicitors, explaining that the interest 
having been regularly paid, he felt much surprised 
at their request. He went on to say, that it would 
put him to grievous inconvenience having to raise 
so large a sum of money within the time specified, 
three months ; that he was anxious to do what he 
could in the matter, but trusted, as he was already 
leavily burdened, that they would agree to take 
the amount in four yearly iastalments of two hun- 


OUR OWN HOME, 


45 


dred and fifty pounds each, interest to be paid at 
the same rate as before, five per cent. 

To this in due course he received a most unsatis- 
factory reply. Mrs. Graham, having been given to 
understand that he had been spending large sums of 
money on property which he merely held on lease, 
did not feel inclined to leave her thousand pounds 
for which she held no sufficient security, in his hands 
any. longer She had instructed her solicitors further 
to remark, that as my parents had not evinced any 
willingness to meet her wishes in a matter on which 
she had set her heart, she should certainly not con- 
sider their desires now. All of which, being trans- 
lated, meant that if they still liked to send up J oan 
to Queen Anne Street, labelled “ glass, with care,’ 
she would reconsider her decision, and probabh 
never ask for the thousand pounds again. 

It was a temptation, certainly, but my parents 
did not yield. They had old-fashioned notions, anri 
considered it would be very like selling or abandon- 
ing Joan to give her to Mrs. Graham. God had in- 
trusted her to them, and if tfo long as tliey lived 
they neglected that trust, how should they answer 
to Him for it in the day when He made up his 
jewels. Further they could not send her from tJiem, 
duty apart. They loved Joan, and all their children, 
and, as my mother said to me once when speaking 
on this matter — 

You must remember, Tom, we had lost three, so 
W€ understood what it was — but I knew those 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


46 

three were safe, and I did not know whether Joan 
would be safe ; that made all the difference.” 

I am only recounting facts as they happened, and 
do not propose to pass judgment on them. Possibly 
my parents were wrong. No doubt it would have 
been a fine thing for them to have had one child 
fed, clothed, and educated free of expense, and with 
the prospect of a good dot in addition ; but still, I 
think if any person, whether old maid or widow, 
whether “King of France, or, far better. Pope of 
Rome,” were to come and ask me for one of my 
blessings, I should feel inclined to reply un- 
civilly. 

Nobody, however, ever did want one of my 
children, and I shrewdly suspect, no one ever wanted 
their mother but myself — and I did not, though I 
married her. Some young men, I notice, are now 
beginning to loom about our house, and I suppose 
some day the “ old story ” will be told me by a new 
narrator. When my girls are “ wanted” that way 
I shall probably not say nay, and I do not think I 
shall be difficult to satisfy pecuniarily. Neverthe- 
less, I do not envy the future of the happy man 
who unites with any one of the blessings of my 
hearth and home, unless he send her first to a school 
for cookery — second, to one of those ladies who ad- 
vertize patterns eighteenpence, and instruction given 
in dress-making. If, further, he can induce her to 
learn arithmetic, and comprehend that there are 
only twenty shillings in a pound, and that an income 
of five hundred a year will not enable people to live 


OUR OWN HOME, 


47 


honestly at the rate of a thousand, I think he might 
go farther and fare worse. 

These are, however, a good many ifs to he leapt 
in the race matrimonial, and perhaps, though I 
doubt it, he might find another wife who would not 
require to go through such a course of education as 
I have indicated. 

Excuse me, most courteous reader, these discursive 
remarks. Although the past is present with me, 
the present will intrude, and crop up between me 
and the story I have undertaken to tell. Where 
was I ? — oh, talking about Joan, who remained on 
at the paternal mansion to become the hoyden I 
have described, and to make me acquainted with 
Rose Surry. 

For which I shall be for ever grateful to Joan, 
who is now a great lady, happy in her hu-jband, her 
children, her position, and herself. 

W^e do not meet very often now, Joan and I, for 
there are certain memories we still wot of that have 
never been decently laid out, and shrouded, and 
coffined, and buried, and forgotten. No — only some- 
times, when she is in London, and can spare time 
from her calls and parties, and other duties (they 
are duties) incident to her position, she drives over 
to the Temple in a quiet single-horse brougham, 
which she leaves in Essex Street, and then walks 
across Devereux Court, and so to Pump Court, where 
she will sit with me for an hour, while her coach- 
man, who is of a literary turn of mind, reads 
Lloyd's IfewspapeVj and sometimes, when he is quite 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


48 

sure no one can see him (but I have done so, crossing 
from Little Essex Street), indulges in a modest 
half-pint, nay even adventures on a cigar. 

Joan will not visit my wife now, for there was 
once a deadly war waged between them, and J oan 
cannot quite forget. But she asks Madam and my 
daughters to her assemblies, where they have an 
opportunity of seeing everybody who has ever done 
anything, and, if they were of a reflective turn of 
mind, which they are not, of considering how ex- 
ceedingly like ordinary mortals great folks are. 

For me, I do not go to Joans grand parties, 
because, for one thing, I do not like parties, pnd in 
the next, I do not like her husband; although, mark 
you, were I in trouble, pecuniary or otherwise, there 
is not a man on earth to whom I would as soon 
turn in my distress as to him. And, on the other 
hand, if sorrow fell on him, I know he would come 
straight away to my office and say, “ Luttrell, you 
tried to help me once — will you do so again 

There are different kinds of friendship, and there 
is one which takes the form of not wanting to see 
your friend every half hour through the day. That 
is our form — and if you wish to know why, I will 
tell you as this story proceeds. 

But not just now, because I am going back to the 
mills and Mrs. Graham. 

The latter lady, I shall always believe, thought 
that my father would never be able to raise the 
money, and that out of sheer desperation he would 
give her Joan, to whom she had taken a fancy 


OUR OWN HOME, 


49 


when she was staying with us a year previously. 
She knew Colonel — now General — Montgomery was 
in India, and like most rich people who live selfish 
and isolated lives, she forgot that it is just upon the 
cards a poor man may, in the course of years, meet 
with some one willing and able to help him at a 
pinch. 

This some one my father knew, and turned to in 
his distress. He had turned to him for advice over 
the debts incurred on that wretched mill, and now 
he went tp him for help, which was given. 

But my father was an honourable man, and, 
knowing his friend could not afford to risk the 
amount he offered him, namely, two thousand 
pounds, which should enable him to clear off every- 
body, and start in life again for the third time, he 
went to a lawyer, in order to enquire what security 
he could offer that might protect his creditor again ?t 
loss. 

To this the lawyer — honest perhaps, but short- 
sighted — answered, “ Insure your life, and give him 
a bill of sale.” Which was just about equivaJent to 
saying, " Put yourself in a pan of scalding water for 
the remainder of your life,” only, unhappily, my 
father did not see this. He insisted actually, 
against his creditor’s desire, on giving him a bill of 
sale over every sheep he owned, horse he had reared, 
hen he had hatched — over his ricks in the farm 
yard, and his implements, carts, furniture, dairy- 
utensils, garden-tools, and so forth. The stock being 
changeable, would have been of course no earthly 


50 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


security in the hands of a different individual, but 
my father looked upon the whole affair as a matter 
of honour, and if he sold a bullock, replaced it — if 
he parted with a stack of hay, duly acquainted Mr. 
Reemes, his friend, with the fact. 

But what did not that bill of sale do for us ? It 
destroyed our credit just as completely as if we 
had been bankrupt — aye more, because a bankrupt 
does, at all events, re-enter the world a free man 
(he will happily not be able to do so much longer), 
and that accursed document kept us bondsmen and 
bondswomen till the uttermost farthing had been 
paid. 

And to pay with a heavy life-insurance premium 
added was not easy. Well — God help us — when 
the end came, which did come, no man could say 
r y father had wronged him of a penny, or that he 
had lost a shilling by him. Further, he reared us all 
respectably, and taught us to live honestly and 
virtuously, and we were happy. Yes, I am grateful 
Lo remember that, though I sometimes wish I had 
been able to contribute more towards that happi- 
ness, and better content to live and die “the jolly 
miller of Dee.” 

Still time went on — it always does go on — and 
my father, struggling heavily with his anxieties, 
gree ed me on my return from the school where, 
after much difficult studying of ways and means, he 
had placed me — with a welcome cheery and loving 
as ever. 

It was the summer when my story opens, and I 


OUR OWN HOME. 


51 


had then been at school two years and a half, study- 
ing my best, and making good progress. Not know- 
ing the state of the farming finances, I had desired 
to become a barrister; and my father, who wa»s 
proud as well as fond of me, said I should follow 
the bent of my inclination, and become famous yet. 

I fancy my mind must have been much older than 
JTfiy years, for I can remember even then having 
visions of the great things destiny had in store for 
me. 

There was no height to which in my ambitious 
dreamings I did not climb. To inexperience the 
path to success seems always easy. There were no 
stones, no briars, no lurking disappointment, no 
pelting showers of opposition and discouragement 
along the road I mentally travelled. I beheld my- 
self wealthy and renowned, I pictured myself 
addressing a jury, I heard my own voice uplifted in 
the House of Commons. I do not think I was more 
vain or more conceited than most lads who have 
not yet found their level, but I must have possessed 
a certain consciousness of my own power to work, 
and succeed by reason of that power, and I used to 
wander about the fields during my summer holidays, 
dreaming my dreams, and building castles in the air 
too grand for any mortal ever to inhabit. 

But by degrees there seemed to fall a mist over 
these fairy palaces. I could not now tell at what 
precise hour a cloud appeared first to flit over the 
surface of my future sky. I felt it was there, rather 
than beheld it. The air seemed to grow suddenly 


52 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


chilly. Like the " keld ” ruffling the serenity of a 
Cumberland tarn, there came over me something 
which caused me to know, dimly it may be, but still 
surely, that life could never prove to mortal like a 
fairy tale, wherein the flowers never withered, and 
sorrow never entered, and the trees remained green 
all the year — wherein men never grew feeble nor 
women old. 

I do know, however, when the storm first broke 
— ^when the magic glass was shivered, and the dear 
illusion dispelled — ^namely, on the afternoon of the 
day when I saw Rose Surry home. 

“ Tom,” said my father, coming to me where I 
was preparing my tackle for the next morning’s 
fishing — “ Tom, I want to speak to you seriously 
for five minutes. You are old enough now to make 
a friend of, and I mean to talk to you like a friend, 
as well as a son, my boy.” 

“ What is it, father ?” I asked, anxiously, for the 
sky seemed suddenly to darken over, and life in a 
moment to assume a very different aspect indeed. 
“ What is the matter ? I will try to be worthy of 
your trust if you only tell me how to make myself 
so.” 

"Stop,” he answered, "do not promise till you 
hear what it all means,” and then he went on to 
repeat what I have already told, with this addition 
— " My health, Tom, is not what it was, and I have 
been thinking the matter over seriously. Suppose 
anything happened to me, what would become of 
your mother, and brothers, and sisters ? If you stiU 


OUR OWN HOME, 


53 


adhere to your intention of becoming a barrister, 
years and years must pass before you can earn a 
penny; whereas, if you could only be content to 
remain at home, you might at a moment’s notice 
step into my shoes, if at any future time the neces- 
sity arose, besides being of the greatest assistance to 
me in the present.” 

I did not speak — I could not speak. I beheld 
my dream castle, like a mist wreath, vanishing 
away. Instead of doing great things for my family, 
I saw myself plodding on year after year — year 
after year — a farmer — a miller. 

I was young, and the sacrifice seemed great ; but 
I loved my father, and so, after a silence, during the 
continuance of which my disappointment seemed to 
be choking me, I said — I would do whatever he 
liked.” 

“ No, Tom,” he replied, " I will not take that 
answer. I do not want you to remain at home 
merely because I tell you to do so. You must think 
the matter over, and decide for yourself It is a 
great deal to give up — but it is also a great deal to 
be able to accomplish. It shall be just as you 
like, Tom, after you have thought the matter 
over.” 

And I did think it over — all the afternoon — all 
the time Rosie was telling me her fairy tale— all 
the way I carried her in my arms home to Old 
Court— all the way back, till I met my father, as 
has already been related. 

It was an awful trial to give up thus, of my 


54 


Afy FIRST LOVE. 


own free will, the hopes and the expectations of my 
life — to be brought down from the pursuit of fabu- 
lous wealth — of unheard-of fame — to the prosaism 
of an existence I knew so well. 

Had my father urged me to adopt any course — 
had he pictured to me the relief I could afford — the 
money my remaining at home would save — it might 
not have seemed so hard to decide ; but he left it 
for me — uninfluenced, remember, by any sentimental 
exaggerations — by any special pleading — to do what 
I thought best and right. 

A.nd thinking it best and right to put self on one 
side — to consider the many instead of the one, I de- 
cided — and when I told him my decision, and heard 
him say, “ God bless you, Tom !” a conviction stole 
over me that there might be something more 
blessed in life than having one’s own way — namely, 
the consciousness of having striven to do one’s best 
for those who were nearer and dearer than self. 

“ God bless you, Tom !” I think it no shame to 
say that my eyes filled when my father laid his 
hand on my shoulder and spoke those words, and 
that as we walked home through the twilight 
together, talking like friends, it seemed a finer and 
a manlier thing to face the realities of life, and con- 
quer them, than to build air castles, which never an 
one might inhabit, even mentally, save myselfi 


CHAPTER V. 


ALL ABOUT BOSE. 

S O it came about that I remained at home, and 
helped my father. All the day long I was 
about the farm, or down at the mills — the uppei 
mill, where the wheel was undershot, and where that 
rascal Bill, the herd boy, instead of keeping his 
charges from straying, fished in the pond, with a 
bent pin and a bit of string, whenever he thought 
my back was turned — and the lower mill, which, 
though more newly built, was more picturesque, 
since the water fell over the wheel, making a pleasant 
music all the day long. 

Thus passed nearly four years, and during that 
time scarcely a day went by without my seeing Rose 
Surry. Sir Humphrey had always been friendly 
with my father, and in the habit of stopping at the 
mill, to chat over politics, or of accepting an invi- 
tation to enter our house — covered with creepers 
and roses — in order to say good-morning to my 
mother, and taste the last October brewing; and 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


56 

although Lady Surry held herself aloof, as was 
natural, from such plebeians as ourselves, still a little 
incident, which occurred after I had been at home a 
year, compelled civility even from that stately dame, 
who, if only the daughter of a village apothecary, 
yet gave herself all those haughty airs which stamp 
the line of “ Vere de Verft.” 

Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride to 
the devil,” states an old adage; but Lady Surry, 
once mounted, did nothing of the kind. She simply 
galloped across the frontier line of a different class, 
and took up her position with them — a rare, 
haughty madam, who looked down upon the “ lower 
orders ” as inferior beings, and made herself offensive 
to a degree no one who has not come in contact 
with a woman of her type can imagine. 

But, spite of her pride and conceit, there were 
things Lady Surry could not do. For example, she 
could not drive — she was not to the manner born ; 
and though she would turn out in a low phaeton, 
sometimes drawn by a pair, sometimes by only one 
pony, every one saw that she had not the remotest 
idea how to manage a horse and that if she failed 
some day to come to grief, it would only be through 
the special intervention of Providence, or, as not a 
few hinted, of that other power who is popularly, 
and, I must say, I think not fallaciously, supposed 
to take care of his own. 

The service I was enabled to do Lady Surry arose 
out of her utter ignorance of equine nature, and 
was rendered in this wise. 


ALL ABOUT ROSE. 


57 


One day, as I was walking into Crommingford, 
I beheld, at some distance from me, a phaeton in 
imminent danger of being backed into the ditch, for 
the horse which was harnessed to it had drawn 
right across the road, plunging furiously, whilst the 
driver — a lady — strove to mend matters by flogging 
the horse unmercifully. 

The creature did not know what she wanted, and 
she did not know what she wanted herself ; where- 
upon, seeing that the result could only prove a 
smash, and a bad one, I ran on to the scene of action 
as rapidly as possible, and arrived just in time to 
seize the reins, and prevent the frightened animal 
from overturning both itself and the vehicle. 

Of course when I ran forward I did not know who 
the fair one in distress might be, nor for a moment 
afterwards, indeed — not until she spoke — was I 
aware that I had saved Lady Surr}^ from what 
might have proved a serious accident, neither did 
she recognize me. 

" I cannot think,” she began, in a tone wherein 
anger and fear were about equally mingled, “ what 
is the matter with the horse. He never did so 
before.” 

“ Perhaps he never had the same reason,” I said 
while stroking the frightened creature, and trjdngto 
pacify him. He has got the shaft inside the saddle ; 
you must have been urging him on and then sud- 
denly checking him. Here, my lad,” I added, ad- 
dressing the small boy in buttons— her only attend- 
— who stood on the other side of the horse, 

5 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


58 

apparentl}'^ terrified to death. “ When I back him 
you pull out the shaft — do you see V but the boy 
either could not see or else would not do it, so I 
had to beg Lady Surry to alight, while we un- 
buckled the strap and extricated the shaft, which 
must have annoyed the horse inconceivably. 

“ Oh ! it is you, Mr. Luttrell, is it T she said, as 1 
assisted her to the ground. “ I am infinitely obliged 
for your kindness,” whereupon I said it was nothing, 
all the time being well aware that Madam’s fingers 
were itching to give me half-a-crown, and that she 
was bemoaning her fate, which had sent me instead 
of a labourer to her assistance. 

After that I took the horse out, and walked him 
up and down for a few minutes — soothing him as 
best I could — then, when he seemed tolerably quiet, 
I harnessed him, spite of a few kicks and plunges. 
I was in my native element with the animal. I had 
been with horses all my life, and I felt almost su- 
perior for once to Lady Surry, whom I asked if she 
would allow me to drive her home. 

“ He is hardly safe for a lady’s hand yet,” I sug- 
gested ; and, although with a bad grace, she thanked 
me for my offer, and accepted it. 

As we went up the avenue I saw Sir Humphrey 
before us in the distance, and when we overtook 
him I pulled up, and jumping out, proposed to re- 
linquish the reins. 

“No,” he said, when Lady Surry had told him 
the story in a garbled form, and without giving me 
the credit I thought I deserved, “as you have 


ALL ABOUT ROSE. 


59 

managed so admirably, you had better complete 
your adventure by delivering my wife safely at 
home ; you know, Matilda,” he added, what I 
always tell you, there is danger in your going out 
with only that boy, for you cannot drive — you 
never could — those phaetons are never safe vehicles 
at the best of times, and had the horse not been 
quiet as a sheep, it is hard to say where you might 
have been before Mr. Luttrell reached you.” 

Which was altogether a nice re-assuring speech 
for a man to utter to a woman of Lady Surry’s 
peculiar mental organization, and I saw ‘a flush rise 
nearly to her temples as she listened. 

She bore the thrust wMl, however, merely an- 
swering with a little laugh, “I think, however, I 
can manage him now so far as the house myself, 
and I will drive on so as to meet Mr. Luttrell at 
luncheon.” 

Thus assuming that I intended lunching with 
her. 

As the phaeton disappeared I turned to Sir Hum- 
phrey, and begged he would excuse me if I said 
good-bye. 

“ Indeed, I shall not excuse you at all,” answered 
the Baronet, whose manner was hearty, and who 
meant what his manner implied. “ My wife told 
me to bring you in, and I mean to do so.” 

But when I told him straightforwardly that I 
would rather not go to Old Court, that we dined 
early at home, and that if I were not in they would 
be waiting for me. Sir Humphrey seemed to under- 

5—2 


6o 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


stand exactly how I felt about the affair, and 
pressed his hospitality no further, although he 
walked with me so far as the gate near the bridge 
already mentioned, aye, and even strolled a few 
yards further up the lane. 

Perhaps it may have been this backwardness on 
our part — this determination not to thrust ourselves 
upon people who were wealthier and grander than 
we — that made Lady Surry more tolerant of Rose’s 
visits to our house, or perhaps she did not know of 
their frequency. 

Personally, I have always suspected that the good 
looks and flattering tongue of a young fellow em- 
ployed in the lower mill, had much to do with the 
fact that Rose’s nurse affected with her charge this 
particular spot of earth. 

“ It was so nice sitting by the water,” one day she 
told me ; but then, as there was water in Sir Hum- 
phrey’s grounds, this assertion did not exactly 
“ wash,” for which reason, perhaps, she thought it 
well to add — 

“And it is so pleasant to hear the mill-wheel 
going.” A remark that, having a touch of poetry 
about it, looked to me still more suspicious. 

Those were the days in which Rose and I became 
such fast comrades — in which we looked for the 
earliest primrose, and welcomed wild hyacinths, 
violets, and wood-anemones, like friends. Those 
were the days when we looked for the blue bonnets’ 
eggs, and watched with the intensest anxiety for 
the moment when half-a-dozen young thj'ushe^ 


ALL ABOUT ROSE. 


6i 


should, at sight of us, open their bills for food — 
those were the days when my darling made her 
swords, and parasols, and butterfly cages, out of 
rashes — when we were all very innocent and very 
happy, and when I had experienced just enough of 
the world’s disappointments and the world’s anxiety 
to be aware of the value of a happiness which the 
troubles and cares of after life often prevent a man 
enjoying. 

The sacriflce — I use the word for want of a better, 
for none occurs at the moment, wliich will exactly 
express my meaning — the sacrifice of my own incli- 
nations I had made, and the footing on which my 
father put me when I made it, enabled me to take 
part in the family counsels, and as my father and I 
drew nearer and nearer together, I ventured to 
suggest many reforms in our manage, and to in- 
stitute domestic changes that seemed to me greatly 
needed. 

Studying hard myself, and doing what I could to 
instruct Joan, whose education was grievously back- 
ward, seeing no chance of the younger fry being 
sent to school, and noticing that years, the most 
important of their lives, were passing away while 
they were learning nothing during their passage, I 
talked to my father concerning the expediency of 
procuring a governess capable of teaching the elder 
children, and initiating Joan into those feminine 
mysteries and accomplishments wherein, owing to 
the fact that my mother’s time was always occupied 


6a 


3fV FIRST LOVE. 


with the younger children, she bade fair to be so 
ignorant. 

It was a good day for Joan when Miss Snowdon 
came amongst us, and the governess proved a com- 
fort to my mother too, although at first, of course, 
she did not like the idea of having a stranger 
domesticated at our hearth. 

Naturally, Joan sulked and rebelled a little at the 
commencement of the new dynasty, but after a long 
talk and walk she and I had one day together, she 
agreed she was growing old enough to be a “ young 
lady,” and to try to help in keeping things straight. 
Dear Joan, she made none the worse mother to our 
young ones, none the less careful an instructress 
when the time arrived for her to do her part, because 
she had once climbed trees, and stolen cherries, and 
perilled her neck, and tom her clothes. 

In my short-sightedness I was wont to endure 
agonies of humiliation at the ways of my “ boy 
sister,” as I used to caU her ; but there was not one 
amongst us nine who turned out so true, and brave, 
and tender, and self-sacrificing, as Joan, and I have 
often thought since, that in the woods and by the 
river she must have conned those lessons which 
have stood her in such good stead many and many 
a time. If she did not learn what she knew from 
nature, where else could she have been so instructed ? 
A grand girl you developed into, my sister, when the 
need came for you to exert yourself ; and prosperity 
has not changed your nature, for you are the largest- 


ALL ABOUT ROSE, 63 

souled TToman I ever met — one — even my love not 
excepted. 

After Miss Snowdon had been with us for a time, 
one day, to our intense astonishment, Lady Surry 
called, not, as might be imagined, to request that all 
acquaintance between her daughter and Rose should 
cease, but to ask, as a great favour, if Rose might 
be permitted to join Miss Snowdon’s classes. She 
had heard from Sir Humphrey, she added, “ what 
a most superior person Mrs. Luttrells governess was, 
and as Rose was too delicate and young to be sent 
to school, she felt most anxious for her to learn with 
other children, when emulation might induce appli- 
cation.” 

All of which being translated, meant that Lady 
Surry was beginning to feel ashamed of Rose, who 
really, so far as book-learning went, could not be 
considered any better than a little dunce, and that 
she most earnestly desired to avoid the expense and 
trouble of engaging a governess on her own account. 

Clearly she had survived all her former fears of 
our encroaching on her condescension, for she was 
most gracious in her manner towards my mother, 
and actually went so far as to say she hoped she 
would come some day and see the gardens at Old 
Court. 

Considering the gardens at Old Court were not 
worth seeing, and that my mother never went out- 
side our gates excepting to church. Lady Surry’s 
somewhat careful approaches to neighbourliness 
were duly appreciated by us alL 


64 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


But it was settled that Bose should come and 
learn witli our children, and accordingly each day in 
the summer my fairy used, attended by her nurse, 
or Hoskins, to come over dressed all in white, while 
in the winter she appeared a mass of bright colours 
wrapped up in furs. The darling face, looking out 
from its scarlet hood trimmed with white swans- 
down, seems to be peeping at me now. Oh, Rose, I 
loved you then, although I did not know it — 
although not a feminine face, excepting those of my 
mother and sisters, had ever glanced out of the 
windows of my air castles, I loved you sweetest — 
loved you when I used to run out and lift you from 
the phaeton, and carry you away to the school- 
room, where I set you down beside a blazing fire. 

Every one was fond of the child — she was every- 
body’s pet — she was in -nobody’s way. She was not 
very clever, but she could learn all it seemed likely 
she would ever need to know, and I helped her, and 
so did Joan, and she worshipped Joan, believing 
my sister to be the best, the dearest, the darlingest 
that ever lived. 

Since his marriage, I do not believe Sir Humphrey 
had ever felt so happy as when it was arranged 
that his pet was to come and learn with our children. 
Sometimes he would take our house on his way 
home, and then it was wonderful to see the little 
eager face, and to hear the glad cry of “ papa, papa,” 
and to behold how, unmindful of all discipline, she 
would fling down her book and rush out to greet 
him, and be caught up in his great strong arms. 


ALL ABOUT ROSE, 


6S 


They would go away hand-in-hand togetner like a 
pair of children, Rose turning at intervals to nod to 
Joan, who always watched the little figure disap- 
pearing tiU it became a mere speck in the distance. 

Once, too, when Lady Suny was invited to some 
grand house where it was impossible she could go 
without a maid, she wrote and asked my mother to 
take charge of Rose during her absence, and although 
we all felt Lady Surry was doing us the honour of 
making use of our poor house and its belongings, 
still we were too glad at the prospect of Rose’s visit 
to feel resentful or other than delighted, to have the 
fairy princess all to ourselves for a whole fortnight. 

It was during the course of that fortnight Dick 
Tullett, an old schoolfellow of mine, who had turned 
artist, and was down sketching in our neighbour- 
hood, took a portrait of Rose, sitting in our porch, 
with her lap full of fiowers, and her face turned half 
towards us, while her eyes were inclined to look 
slyly down. Dick had never until then thought 
of becoming a portrait or figure painter, but he 
succeeded so well in reproducing Rose on paper, 
that Sir Humphrey bought the crayon sketch from 
him, and Dick, with that adaptability which is one 
of the proofs of genius, at once abandoned trees, 
and turned his attention to men, or rather to 
women. 

He is Dick TuUett no more to me or to anybody 
else ; he is Richard Tullett, Esquire, R.A., who lives 
in a great house at the West End, and has painted 
half the female members of the nobility, and in 


66 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


noted for his dexterous treatment of satin and 
pearls. He exhibits every year of course several 
portraits, which are so many advertisements and 
testimonials in his favour ; he has become in his 
way — a bad way in my opinion — a tremendous 
swell, and is good enough to invite us to his “ At 
Homes,” which are held on Saturday evenings, with 
an appendix on Sundays for the benefit of a select 
few ; but I do not like Dick now any more than I 
like his pictures. He could no more paint a child 
at this minute like the child he drew when scarcely 
out of his teens, than he could fly. They are all 
little ladies — all Misses — all lacking that sweet sim- 
plicity wherewith he surrounded my darling seated 
amid the flowers. 

From his youth upward Dick always kept one 
eye flxed steadily upon the main chance, even 
though at the same time he might be looking with 
the other at his art ; therefore it did not surprise 
me that he should accept Sir Humplirey’s offer for 
a portrait he had really executed for and given to 
me. Neither will it astonish any one who may have 
the pleasure of Mr. Tullett’s acquaintance at the 
present day, to know he never offered to draw me 
another. 

In after days Sir Humpliroy kindly lent the ori- 
ginal to Joan, who copied it for me in her amateur 
fashion, and from that copy was executed by one of 
the most lovely portrait-painters I ever knew the 
miniature which suggested the title of this story, 
and which I have laid down before me as I write. 


ALL ABOUT ROSE. 


67 


We were happy then in that glorious summer 
weather, happy as health and youth and inexpe- 
rience ought ever to he. There was sunshine above, 
there were flowers all round and about our paths. 
We seemed to be living in a great house containing 
many rooms, the treasures of which could never 
change nor become exhausted ; but our house, our 
beautiful habitation, was built upon the sand, and 
when, after the tempest which beat upon it, the rain 
had subsided, and the winds were still, behold we 
looked, and there remained not of all that grand pile 
one stone left upon another. 


CHAPTER VL 


LOVE-MAKING. 


FTER I harl been “ doing my duty,” as people 



put it, for the space of three years or there- 
abouts, and when things were getting a little 
straighter pecuniarily, when spite of the bill of sale 
we had weathered some very ugly storms, and were 
beginning to consider ourselves in tolerably smooth 
waters, there came overtures of conciliation from 
Mrs. Graham, who wrote to say that having inci- 
lentally heard her nephew had relinquished his plan 
>f letting me study for the bar, she could not refrain 
Iroin expressing her regret at the fact. She had 
hoped, she said, to see one of the family in the way 
of making himself famous before she died and it was 
consequently a real grief to her (this Mrs. Graham, 
underlined) to learn that her nephew meant to waste 
the brains she understood I possessed on “ guano 
and bran.” 

Why Mrs. Graham pitched on those two words 
as representative terms for agriculture and milling, 


LOVE-MAKING, 69 

to this day I cannot comprehend; I only know she 
employed them, and that my father pondered over 
her sentence more perhaps than he might have 
done had it been differently worded. 

Had Mrs. Graham’s letter, however, contained no 
further sentence, it is needless to say the grief it 
expressed would have been disregarded, but the 
lady, warming with her subject, proceeded to greater 
lengths. She offered, in the event of my father per- 
mitting me to pursue the course originally intended, 
to let bygones be bygones, to pay all my reasonable 
expenses through college, and to allow me one hun- 
dred and fifty pounds a year till I had made the 
way at the bar she confidently anticipated for me. 
Should I care to gratify an old woman s whim, she 
went on, it would please her if I could come to 
town and arrange preliminaries. She wanted no 
thanks, it was purely to please herself she made the 
proposal, and she trusted in this case no feeling of 
jealousy on the part of my parents would frustrate 
her wishes. 

Jealousy ! I should like to have seen the person 
who could have made my parents jealous concerning 
the affection of their children ! 

Had my father given me this letter to read over 
quietly, when I was alone, I think nothing might 
ever have come of it — that my sense would have 
told me I was doing my duty where I was, and that, 
all things considered, I had no right to place my 
inclinations first, the help I owed my father second. 

But he read the letter to me, and the thing coming 


70 


MV FIRST LOVE 


suddenly — at a time, too, when I \\as perhapa a 
trifle weary of the monotony of my work, when the 
.)ld discontent was leavening all my nature — I could 
not for the moment help a look of utter thankful- 
ness resting on my face — an exclamation of rejoicing 
escaping my lips. 

“ That settles the question, Tom,” said my father 
— and though sobered in a moment, I begged time 
for consideration, for decision, he adhered to his 
text. 

“ I know where your heart is now,” he replied to 
all my entreaties — I know, and I will not baulk 
you again. Besides, things are much better noAv, 
Tom — and if — if anything happened to me, you are 
old enough, and business man enough, to see to 
them. And Joan is getting up, also — dear Joan !” 

Dear Joan ! — ay, truly the blessed angel of our 
house — who came to me when she heard the news, 
and bade me go forth, never doubting. 

“ I will try to take your place, so far as I can, 
Tom. I can see to most things, and help papa, 
greatly ; and he has set his heait, like Mrs. Graham 
and me, on your doing credit to us all — so go, Tom 
— go. It will be best for every one of us.” 

“ If you were not here, Joan, I should not go a 
step,” I said. 

“ Then for me — go,” she answered, and I agreed. 
But Joan — dear Joan — could you but have seen to 
the end, would you have been so urgent, I wonder ? 
Has all the success paid quite for the disappoint- 
ment ? 


LOVE-MAKING, 


7 ^ 


“ But you might have had the disappointment 
without the success/’ Joan would suggest, were she 
here at this moment, and I subscribe to this, believ- 
ing honestly that all we have to do with our lives is 
to bear the burden of them, and to try and make 
ourselves content with whatever lot God is pleased 
to give us. 

And so it was all settled that Mrs. Graham’s offei 
should be accepted, and I go up to London to sec 
the old lady — and life. At the risk of being con- 
sidered either untruthful or methodistical, I found 
both about equally dull. London, I take it, to a 
youth who has been decently brought up, and who 
has no friends in the great metropolis, is as stupid a 
place as a quagmire on the river. I had no one to 
take me to see those sights which are really inter- 
esting — I had no one to talk to — no one to tell me 
the places of amusement at which a few hours might 
be spent pleasantly. 

There is no town where a lad cannot find plenty 
of people to indoctrinate him into its vices and its 
follies ; but these casual acquaintances had no 
charms for me. I was not exactly like a boy let 
loose from his mother’s apron strings, and when, in 
sheer disgust and ennui, I turned back to the poor 
lonely woman in Queen Anne Street, who was going 
to do so much for me, that I felt my leisure hours 
were due to her, she received me with such grati- 
tude, as convinces me now her married life could 
not have been a life drenched through and through 
with rose water. 


n 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


Of my college experiences I do not intend to give 
you any record ; I worked hard, and ultimately 
proved successful. I had my troubles, but I extri- 
cated myself from them. I got into debt — more 
shame for me — but managed to satisfy the people 
who had trusted to my honour ? — shall I say with- 
out troubling my father ? I had my flirtations — 
one a trifle too serious, so far as the girl was con- 
cerned, to recall now without regi’et ; but all these 
things have affected my life but little. What did 
influence it, was that evening in the early spring 
time, when I stood with Rose Surry under the apple 
trees, whispering my love. 

I have already repeated what she said to me 
afterwards, and the reader may conclude from that 
what words were foregone. Truth was, we had 
always loved each other, and whenever we came to 
years of discretion — nay, rather to the years when 
folly seems wisdom — we could refrain from speech 
no longer. It was so sweet to stand there in the 
moonlight, with my arm round her waist, unmindful 
of father or mother — of social differences — of ways 
and means of marriage — of houses — servants, equi- 
pages, friends, society — of aught save love. 

/ Had I the gift of that successful Academician, 
Richard Tullett, Esq., I should like to present you 
with a sketch from memory of my darling, as she 
stood in the moonlight, with her dear head a little 
drooping, listening to the old, old story, that was 
then all new to her — new to her — yes, new to both 
of us. I am grateful to remember it was so. Rose — 


LOVE-MAKING, 


73 


that I never really loved a woman before — that I 
have never, in the true acceptation of the word, 
loved a woman since. Ohl sweet, pure face, did 
the moon’s light ever fall on anything more beauti- 
ful ! Oh ! slight, fragile figure, did poet ever dream 
of aught more exquisite than your tender grace ! 
Oh ! dear, true heart — mine is breaking now to 
think of all it had to endure. Though grey hairs 
are plentifully mingling with the black — though 
my cheeks are furrowed, and Time’s chisel has been 
busy tracing lines across my forehead — though I 
am growing old, and feel often that the end is nearer 
than the beginning, still, recalling this night all our 
story, memory leaps back over the years, and the 
bliss and the anguish are both as keen now as they 
seemed in the days when we both were young — 
when we loved, when we hoped, when we lost. 

I was twenty-five years of age that very day, and 
my darling a little over sixteen ; but she was in 
many ways younger than her age then — -just as she 
had been younger than her age when first 1 knew 
her. 

To her parents she seemed only a child still, while 
to mine she was no older than Patty, who had only 
been promoted to long dresses and turned-up hair 
a few months previously. Joan was the only one 
who suspected our affection one for the other, or 
who guessed, when she came to call us in to supper, 
why we had lingered in the orchard so long. 

I suppose, had Rose been a model young lady, she 
would, instead of letting me know that I was more 


74 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


fco her than anybody in the world, have referred mo 
to her father — as we are well aware that fathers 
usually know more of the secrets of their daughters* 
hearts than daughters themselves ; but then Rose 
was not a model young lady, and chanced to be, 
unhappily, also an utter coward, dreading her mo- 
ther’s anger — never so happy as when she could 
keep every occurrence of her life from that matron’s 
knowledge, and never so wi'etched as while dreading 
that “ perhaps mamma might get to know — perhaps 
some one might tell her.” 

For myself, I confess that although clearly I 
ought either to have asked Sir Humphrey’s consent 
to my addressing his daughter at all, or proceeded 
next morning to Old Court, there to unfold a tale, 
I did nothing of the kind, and were I to pass my 
life over again, I should still do nothing of the kind. 

I never could understand, and I never shail, 
learned in the law as people imagine me to be, why 
the moment a man has whispered a love tale, he 
should be expected forthwith to ice his passion by 
requesting an interview with the beloved object’s 
father — why he should, witliin twenty-four hours 
at latest, be required to chill his tender affections 
by entering, hat in hand, the library where paterfa- 
milias receives him grimly — (I am speaking, of 
course, of those cases when a man has not ten 
thousand a-year and a title, and is consequently 
utterly ineligible, excepting in the eyes of the 
“ one only,”) and going through a statement of his 
affairs, which in the nature of things cannot, and 


LOVE-MAKING. 


75 


does not, prove satisfactory, but always leaves the 
stern parent full of dark suspicions concerning his 
income, his prospects, hLs connections, his habits, his 
expenses, and himself. 

It has often occurred to me that it would save 
much trouble and anxiety both to the lover and the 
beloved object’s friends, if after a certain amount ol 
spooning had been gone through, and the sentiments 
of dearest Donnabella ascertained, the young aspi- 
rant for matrimonial honours were to write some- 
what in this fashion to Donnabella’s natural protec 
tor : — 


“ Sir, 

“I beg to inform you that, having ever} 
reason to believe your beloved daughter regards me 
with sentiments warmer than those of mere esteem 
T have placed a statement of my affairs in the hand^ 
of Messrs. Crisp and Sutton, Accountants, Throg 
morton Street, who in the course of a few days wi] 
communicate with you on the subject, when I trust 
the result may prove satisfactory. With reference tc. 
the respectability of my antecedents and present 
position, I beg to enclose testimonials which wouh' 
I flatter myself, convince the mind of even a Marl 
borough Street magistrate. 

“ Your obedient servant, 

" Donnabella’s Lover.*' 

The advantages of such a course of proceeding 
must be at once apparent. It would be pleasanter 

6—2 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


/6 

for the young man, for the young woman, and for 
the young woman’s friends, and it would further 
produce another most desirable effect, namely, en- 
abling Donnabella’s lover, when he became her hus- 
band, to silence those remarks concerning Donna- 
bella’s not having known,” and Donnabella’s lover 
havincj deceived her before marriagfe, which occa- 
sionally, when the veneer of the walnut- wood 
furniture begins to crack, and the paint of the 
newly decorated villa to peel off, and the first 
brightness of the bran new carpets to fade, are apt 
to be made by even the most devoted of wives, and 
the best of women. 

I, at all events, after sunning myself in Rose’s 
smiles, never dreamt of venturing into the keen 
frost I knew I should have to encounter in the 
presence chamber at Old Court, and indeed, when I 
told Rose that I loved her — and she said she loved 
me — marriage seemed as far distant from us as 
death. 

There was no need to think of or to plan for it. 
Years must pass, I knew, before it would be possible 
for me to take Rose away from her parents ; but 
she was so young, this seemed a matter of little 
consequence, and I felt so sure of my own ultimate 
success, of my own ability eventually to surround 
her with every luxury she was likely 'to desire, 
that I felt it no dishonour to let her even in stealth 
engage herself to me. I knew no one could love 
Rose as I loved her, I knew no one could make her 
Bo happy, and finally I could not help telling her all 


LOVE-MAKING, 


77 


that was in my breast. Many an evening during 
that visit home, the words, though trembling on my 
lips, remained unuttered. It was all such fairy 
land, that I dreaded speaking, lest speech should 
destroy the illusion. True love always makes a 
man timid, and I remained silent when my heart 
was full, lest my dove, instead of nestling in my 
bosom, should be frightened away. 

But somehow it aU came about naturally that 
evening. I was leaving on the morrow, and Rose 
looked sad ; I told her I should be back again for 
a long long visit in the summer, and then she sighed 
and said she feared she should not be at Old Court. 
That very day Lady Surry had spoken of the 
necessity of their going abroad, as Sir Humphrey’s 
health had lately been anything rather than satis- 
factory. 

Then I asked her if she should be glad to go, and 
she said she should like to visit the continent, 
but — 

But what. Rose V 

"I have never been very much with mamma, 
and I shall be sorry to leave Old Court and Joan.” 

“And no one else?” I asked. My heart seemed 
to stand still at my own temerity, but the plunge 
had been made, and I must go on. 

How I went on I cannot remember, and if I could 
I should not tell ; all I can say is we stood there 
steeped in bliss, as the orchard lay steeped in moon- 
light, and the fairy tale of her childhood had come 
actually to pass, and in answer to my question she 


78 AfV FIRS! LOVE 

said, with that slight lisp which comes back to m> 
ear now — the merest suspicion of a lisp — “ It all 
happened in this garden, Tom, and the prince and 
princess are you and me.” 

Oh ! royal land of love, which may be trodden 
alike by peer and peasant, in which each man, what- 
ever his estate, may feel a king ! I wonder if any 
two who ever entered your domain were so happy 
as Bose and I that night ; for us the curse seemed 
lifted from the earth, to us the supper table, to 
which Joan summoned us, seemed spread with 
viands that tasted as food had never tasted before 
— we felt no sorrow, we experienced no dread — and 
when we left the dining-room, and passed into an 
apartment which was lighted only by the moon- 
beams, in order that Joan, as was her custom, 
might sing to my father before he retired for the 
night, I silently pressed Rose’s hand, in order to 
emphasize the words of Joan’s song, and in return 
the little fingers closed on mine with a clasp that 
seemed to say : “ Never, Tom — ^never — for ever.” 

There are some ballads which seem to mix 
themselves up with one’s life. It does not matter 
how slight the words may be, or how simple the 
melody to which they are allied — they still link 
themselves with the recollection of events, still 
after long years float plaintively through the 
chambers of memor}^. 

As I remember the moonlight and the apple 
blossoms, the swift tender expression that passed 
over my darling’s face, the pressure of her hand, 


LOVE-MAKING, 


79 


the touch of her hair when it swept my cheek as I 
drew her towards me, so likewise I remember the 
ballad Joan sung that night, with a certain inten- 
tion and meaning, I thought, but perhaps I might 
be mistaken ; yet if not, the words were strangely 
applicable to our position. Here they are : — 

“ I never can forget thee, 

Whate’er my lot may be ; 

In sadness or in joy, my heart 
Will ever turn to thee ; 

The fond remembrance of the past 
May sometimes bring regret, 

But till my life shall cease to be, 

I never can forget. 

I never can forget thee, 

My destiny is cast. 

For as thou wert my first love, 

So thou wilt be my last ; 

You say I soon shall cease to think 
That we have ever met. 

But oh I you little know my heart. 

To say I can forget.”* 

J oan sang 'other songs that night, but of them 
my memory holds no record. Love never does, 
save of the things which concerns itself ; save fo^ 
the beloved object it is essentially selfish. I fear 
Rose and I were essentially selfish, as seated close 


* The words of the above, which are written by Miss E. Hersee, 
have been wedded to a simple and touching melody by Mrs. John 
Holman Andrews. 


8o 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


beside one another we listened to the music. Know* 
ing what we knew, it was sufficient to be near, 
breathing the same air, hearing the same music — 
ah ! me. 

Suddenly it seemed so to my imagination, but 
in reality I suppose after a long succession of sweet 
sounds, Joan rose from the piano. 

“ Do you know how late it is V she asked, 
putting her hands on my shoulder ; and I started to 
remember Rose had only stayed with us to supper, 
after nmch persuasion, and on the positive assu- 
rance that I would see her home early, before Sir 
Humphrey and Lady Surry returned from a dinner 
p*>rty whither they were gone. 

I will put on my bonnet at once,” Rose said, 
guiltily, and then with the charming readiness and 
equivocation natural to her sex, she added : ‘‘ I 
forgot everything, dear Joan, while listening to 
your singing.” 

Did you, love ? I think not quite. 

When she hurried from the room to invest herself 
in the warm wraps which Patty insisted she should 
wear, Joan, coming quite close up to me, observed ; 
“ I shall walk home with you, Tom.” 

“No, no, Joan,” I answered, pettishly, “you had 
much better not venture out in the nitrht air.” 

But Joan, drawing me aside to one of the windows, 
stuck to her resolution. “ Last evening I should not 
have offered the infliction of my company, but to- 
night I insist,” she said. “ Last evening no matter 
what any person had remarked, you might have 


LOVE-MAKING, 


8i 


defied him, but now the case is different. I shall 
be dreadfully cZe iro'p^ of course, but I mean to make 
one of the party, nevertheless.” 

Which she did, keeping close beside us on the 
open road, where we might possibly meet some 
passer-by, and lingering behind as we entered the 
avenue, when my hand stole to Eose’s, and Eose’s 
little palm pressed against mine in token of deai 
remembrance of the words we heard that evening 
mutually uttered. 

J oan, if you were not so high above me, mentally 
as well as sociall}?’, I should like to ask, as a mere 
matter of curiosity, where you learnt all the lore 
you used to such advantage on the occasion in ques- 
tion. 

Not out of any book, so much I can swear, since 
no book of the sort has ever been written ; not by 
experience, for girls, unless they lead the lives of 
utter Bohemians, must, for reasons too numerous 
to mention, remain experimentally ignorant of 
these matters, until a lover appears for whom they 
care. Now, though there were one or two indi- 
viduals who "came after” Joan, to use an expression 
current in our part of the world, there was nobody 
Joan wanted to come after her. My hoyden sister 
held her head rather high for her position, suitors 
said, thus reconciling themselves to the rebuffs 
they received ; but though Joan has since married 
above her then station, I knew she was not wait- 
ing to carry her wares to a better market. 

Only like many girls she had her ideal of a hus- 


82 


Ml FIRST LOVE, 


band, and none of the young men who sought hei 
love fulfilled that ideal, wherefore Joan was still 
heart-whole, and yet she knew by intuition all 
Rose and I had to say to each other. 

I should like to be a woman for a time, in order 
to be able to understand the reason of this wonder- 
ful instinct which they possess. 

Truly as the author of School remarks: Bless 
them, they know everything, and what they do not 
nature teaches them.” 

But how does nature do it ? I wish Mr. Robinson 
had added that piece of information. 

When we drew near the house, Joan came to 
Rose’s side, but she did not talk, or seem to hear 
my whisper to Rose as we stood before the hall 
door ; " Are you happy, love T 

She lifted her dear eyes to mine, and as the 
moonlight fell full upon her face, I could read there 
no shadow of disquietude, no trace of doubt or 
regret. 

“ You know I am,” she murmured shyly ; and 
then Hoskins, grown gray and stooping, appeared, 
and Joan and I bade her good-night, and walked 
back together, talking as we went about it all, and 
the best course for us to pursue. 

And we both agreed, for reasons which the 
sagacious reader may easily imagine, that the best 
thing for the three of us to do under the circum- 
stances, was to say nothing whatever — for some 
time, at least — about the fact that I loved Rose, 
and that Rose loved me. 


LOVE-MAKING. 


83 


When in my childhood I was inducted into the 
mysteries of English grammar, and learnt in 
Lindley Murray the famous sentence anent Pene- 
lope, I never imagined that a similar form of 
speech could come to mean so much to me. 

“ You will have to be very careful, though,” Joan 
remarked ; “ you must not let any one suspect 
your feelings till you have spoken to Sir Hum- 
phrey. That was the reason I wished to chape- 
rone you to-night. Tom, confess that for a 
moment you actually hated me ?” 

But I would not confess, and declared that her 
society had added greatly to the pleasure of our 
walk. Nevertheless^ Joan neid 10 nei opimon. 


CHAPTER VIL 


I SEE SIR HUMPHRET. 

I T is a great pity that when a young man tells 
a young woman he loves her, it is thereby im- 
plied and understood — always supposing the young 
man means, as the lower ten millions say, to “ act 
honourable” — he is to marry her with all convenient 
speed. It would be so nice if the matter could go 
on for a little time — even, shall we say, for a 
fortnight — without the fact of the adored one pos- 
sessing a body which will need to be supplied with 
necessary food, and provided with sufficient raiment, 
being forced upon his attention. This is a point on 
which women have such an advantage over us. 

How much will it cost ?” need never occur to 
*iheir minds — unless, indeed, with reference to their 
trousseau, and then somebody else pays for it. 

It shakes down a quantity of the apple blossom 
at once, having to consider that accursed pecuniary 
question. Man being a reasoning animal, and there- 
fore unhappy, has to consider, while seeking his 


/ SIR HUMPHREY. 


85 


mate amongst the flowers of early spring, whether 
he shall be able to provide haws and berries enougli 
for her sustenance in the winter weather. I am not 
aware that such considering does much good, or that 
looking forward, as it is called, really betters ones 
position ; but the whole thing has come to be such 
a recognised necessity of British society, that one 
might as well turn atheist at once, or unbeliever in 
the happiness of being possessed of fifty thousand 
a-year, as strive to evade it. 

Even mentally I did not, and I cannot say that 
the study of ways and means increased my happi- 
ness. The very next morning after I had declared 
my love, I awoke with a new sense of bliss, and a 
new sense of misery, on me. I loved — I was 
beloved ; but, alas ! it was needful for me from that 
hour to consider how soon I could provide a 
nest for my darling — a home I could ask her to 
share. 

This was the weariness. So far as Rose and 1 
were concerned, we could have gone on love- 
making patiently for an indefinite period ; but then 
in the present admirable state of society, which 
requires that before a man begins to make love, he 
shall ask the beloved object to fix the marriage day, 
this was impossible. Had we only been the person-^- 
wliose inclinations needed to have been consulted, 
we could rapturously have taken lodgings, and billed 
and cooed on a second floor, a respectable wedded 
couple ; or we could have corresponded, writing love- 
letters by the five hundred, and wandered about the 


36 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


lanes of Cromingford when I found leisure to return 
thither, till luck changed and I could feel safe in 
asking my love to share the discomforts of a newly 
built semi-detached villa, to which paradisiacal 
abode we might invite our friends, if we had any 
— wishing them at Jericho all the time. 

But either plan, and both plans, Mrs. Grundy 
negatived. 

'‘You shall neither,” so that worthy lady said to 
me, whilst I was shaving next morning, and, in the 
process, cutting my chin— " You shall neither marry 
Rose on your terms, nor court her as you wish. 
If the thing is to be at all, you must lirst face 
your position, and then Sir Humphrey ; after which 
you may perchance have a few blLssful moments — 
more possibly not.” 

Whereupon I anathematized both Mrs. Grundy 
a nd my razor, and resolved to let things remaiii. 

I am happy to think things remained, for what 
ao you imagine occurred ? Lady Humphrey, who 
would persist in considering Rose a child, asked 
m}^ mother to take charge of her during her and 
Sir Humphrey’s absence on the Continent, adding 
that, as of course Miss Surry’s visit would entail 
extra expense, she and Sir Humphrey should wish, 
being aware of our circumstances, to render that 
expense as light as possible. 

To which my dear mother — Heaven bless her ! — 
replied, never thinking, that as one child was away, 
and dear Rose would but fill the place of their 
absent son, she and my father could not think of 


I SEE STR HUMPHREY. 87 

looking upon, or receiving her, save as a visitor — 
one of the family. 

Whereupon Lady Surry wrote a very polite 
letter of acknowledgment, accepted the kindness 
as cordially as it was offered (?), and sent Rose. 

Dear Rose, those were days spent in paradise to 
us. We were together from morning till night, we 
visited aU the well-remembered haunts, we stood 
together where I rescued the hag, and we sat on 
the hank of the river as we had sat that day when 
Lady Surry appeared to spoil our enjoyment. 
Sometimes Joan was with us, sometimes we wan- 
dered about the fields and through the woods 
alone together. It was heaven that time. I hope I 
am not profane when I say I cannot imagine or 
understand any heaven where Rose and I shall not 
be permitted to wander, hand in hand, through the 
Elysian fields. 

“ Purified,” suggests an evangelical relative. My 
dear saint, love purifies. Rose and I were pure in 
those days, in thought and word, as God's holy 
angels. 

“Married,” suggests a C3mic. “And mated,” I 
answer, which disarms his satire. 

There is some truth, I do believe, in the old 
Scottish idea that he who laughs uproariously over 
night is “ fey.” 

In Mr. Grant's novel, the “Romance of War,” 
which I have not read for a quarter of a century or 
less, there is an account of a certain Cameron of 
Fassifem, who, enjoying himself more than his wont 


88 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


as it might be to-night, died not ingloriously on 
the following day. And sometimes, when Rose and 
I were standing in the full sunlight of love, there 
would steal through my mind a memory of that 
olden superstition. 

It was too much, we were too happy ; the bliss was 
too great for earth, the cup too full to be carried 
steadily to our lips. And yet, my darling, if you 
could speak to me now, I think, spite of all that 
followed, you would accept the subsequent grief 
rather than have the sunshine and the love of those 
summer days blotted out from memory. I know I 
would; and much as you suffered, sweetest, T rather 
fancy that, being a man, my share of the misery 
was worse than yours — at least I hope so now, as I 
hoped so then. 

Parents are slow to recognize the possibility of 
their sons and daughters falling in love, and mine 
proved no exception to the general rule. Further, 
they were a little thrown off the track on wliich my 
affections were at that time travelling expiess, by 
various allusions which Mrs. Graham had considered 
it necessary to make in her letters home, concerning 
a certain Miss Sherlock, whom I certainly thought 
a handsome girl, and whose father, a solicitor in 
good practice, seemed inclined to give me that 
countenance and assistance of which sucking barris- 
ters stand so much in need. 

I am not aware that any false delicacy should pre- 
vent my stating Miss Sherlock then loved me, but 
the love was all on her side. Caring for Rose, I 


7 SEE SIR HUMPHREY. 


89 

could not have loved another ; but it pleased Mrs. 
Graham, spite of all my disclaimers, to msist I was 
smitten in that quarter, and she was never weary 
of telling me what a desirable match it would be. 

Not that I think in her heart she much liked 
Miss Sherlock, but the old lady had a keen appre- 
ciation of the value of loaves and fishes, as was 
natural, seeing she had never possessed anything 
else of value in her life ; and Mr. Sherlock, as has 
been said, was powerful and willing, and the mode- 
rate amount of success I had as yet attained was 
owing entirely to him. 

I knew in those days that Miss Sherlock was 
well inclined enough for a fiirtation with me, but I 
did not know she had lost her heart. If I had, 
Mr. Sherlock’s briefs might have gone to some 
other struggling individual ; but as matters stood, I 
thought it no sin to be civil to the daughter, and to 
accept the father’s invitations. 

He was playing his little game, though of course 
it is only afterwards one can see the moves on the 
chessboard of life, and his game was to push me on 
and let me marry his daughter. 

He did me the honour to think I had brains, and 
as he put it, “ the stuff in me,” and people have 
since been good enough to say that Mr. Sherlock’s 
penetration was correct. 

Certainly few people in London at that time 
shared the lawyer’s opinion, so I felt grateful to him 
accordingly. 

Having their heads full of Miss Sherlock, there- 

7 


V 


90 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


fore, my parents never gave a thought to the well* 
known fact, that “propinquity is dangerous,” and 
that my propinquity to Rose was very close indeed, 
until one day when my father came upon us seated 
on the river-bank, a little above the upper mill and 
})ond. It was an utterly secluded spot, with alder 
trees shading the stream, and a rather steep piece of 
ground covered with lilbert trees and brambles, 
rising on the other side of the stream. No one ever 
passed that way, and when after picking our way 
up the bed of the river, we came to a smooth bit 
of turf, the only piece of the bank which was clear 
of trees and underwood, and sat down there with 
the branches closing almost above us, and the ivy 
that grew over the old thorn bushes, making trail- 
ing wreaths, through which wild convolvuluses en- 
twined themselves, we felt almost as though we had 
found some desolate island where never a creature 
dwelt but ourselves. We were wont to sit there 
sometimes in utter silence, listening to the rippling 
of the stream, to the humming of the bees, to the 
songs of the birds, wrapped in a happiness too deep 
for words. But on that especial day I was talking 
to Rose about my hopes and plans, while all the 
while I held her dear hand clasped in mine, uncon- 
scious that at the time my father, whom some 
unhappy chance had led into our wilderness, cross- 
ing the stream where it took a sudden bend, was 
looking disapprovingly on our proceedings. 

He never came near us, however, but walked 
home much exercised in spirit, and disappointed, so 


r SEE SIR HUMPHREY, 


91 


he afterwards told me, in his son, while Rose and I 
unsuspecting wandered home soon afterwards across 
the fields — happy — oh, friends, how happy I could 
never find words to tell ! 

After tea my father asked me if I would come 
with him to the mill, and though I should rather 
have remained at home near Rose, I at once con- 
sented. We passed half way down the avenue and 
then turned off through a field path, where not a 
soul was in sight. When we entered this my father 
said suddenly — 

What is all this between you and Miss Surry, 
Tom r 

The question took me aback for a moment, but 
then I answered : 

“ The old story, sir, we love each other, and some 
day hope to be man and wife.” 

And how long has this been going on T 

** Since I was down in the spring.” 

Have you spoken to Sir Humphrey 

"Certainly not.” 

“Then I am ashamed of you,” said my father, 
hotly. “I did not think any son of mine could 
have acted so dishonourably as to take a mean 
advantage of a girl’s ignorance, and allow her to 
engage herself to him without the knowledge of 
her parents. You must leave here to-morrow, and I 
shall write to Sir Humphrey at once.” 

“ Excuse me,” I answered; “ but if Sir Humphrey 
must be written to, I shall write to him myself 
Of course I am well aware, that situated as I am 

'^—2 


92 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


at present, communicating with Rose’s parents will 
put an end to the matter at once, so far as seeing 
her is concerned ; but since you put the matter in 
that way, I will take the risk.” 

“ 1 am disappointed in you,” my father proceeded, 
“you should never have spoken a word of love to 
the girl till you were sure of her father’s consent ; 
and now when all the harm is done you will not 
even confess you were wrong.” 

“ I do not think I was wrong,” I answered, “ I 
cannot think in our rank it is necessary for mar- 
riages to be contracted like royal alliances ; I have 
loved Rose all my life— I shall never love, and I 
shall never marry another — and I mean to marry 
her if fifty Sir Humphreys refused their consent.” 

“Your love-making shall not go on under my 
roof at any rate,” he replied ; “and till you have 
obtained Sir Humphrey’s permission to address his 
daughter you shall never meet, if I can prevent 
your doing so. You seem to forget the disparity in 
your positions — the objection Sir Humphrey may 
naturally make, not only to your want of means — 
but to the difference in rank, which unquestionably 
exists between you and Miss Surry.” 

“In a worldly point of view,” I replied, “it 
strikes me that a rising barrister is pecuniarily not 
a bad match for the daughter of an almost pauper 
baronet, for Rose will certainly not have one six- 
pence of fortune; and with regard to the social 
differences of which you speak, although county 
people might not yet leave their cards on my wife, 


/ SEE STR HUMPHREY, 


93 


still I am not aware that perfect happiness is to be 
compassed even by an acquaintance with those who 
certainly only tolerate Lady Surry, and sneer at the 
poverty of her husband.” 

“We have had enough of this, Tom,” said my 
father. 

“For me quite enough,” I replied, and for the first 
time in our lives, my father and I parted in anger. 

As for my mother, her regrets, to my intense 
amazement, took quite another form. She was sorry 
she had asked Rose so much to the house — not 
because she feared what Sir Humphrey might think 
of the matter — but because she considered my 
darling a most unsuitable wife for any save a 
wealthy man. 

“She was delicate, she was penniless, she was 
not the* girl to advance a husband’s prospects, she 
knew nothing of household affairs (this from my 
mother, who never tried to know anything of 
them), she was very lovable, and very amiable of 
course, but my mother had hoped I should make a 
different choice. That Miss Sherlock, for instance, 
about whom Miss Graham wrote often — ” 

“ Oh ! confound Miss Sherlock 1” I exclaimed. 

“ If there is to be peace between us, mother, never 
name that woman and Rose together in the same 
sentence again.” 

“ Tom,” broke in Joan at this juncture, “ you 
had better not say anything more about the affair 
at present, mamma will think differently after a 
time, and so will you.” 


9 ^ 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


" If you mean that I shall ever think differently 
about Rose, Joan,” I began defiantly, but she an- 
swered : — 

“No. I only mean that hereafter you will be 
able to understand how mamma and papa look at 
the matter, and they will understand how you feel.” 

What a dear good girl she was. She came to me 
when I was packing my portmanteau, and threw 
fresh oil on the waters. 

By all means, she advised me to go and see Sir 
Humphrey, “ and I should tell Mrs. Graham also,” 
she added. “ If she ever mean to do anything for 
you that will make her say so — and she ought — for 
she has not a relation in the world besides our- 
selves.” 

“ I am afraid she wants me to marry Miss Sher- 
lock,” I said. 

“ Then the sooner she knows you are not going to 
marry Miss Sherlock the better,” Joan declared. 
“Tom, take the little sketch I copied from Dick 
Tullett’s portrait, and show it to her. I wish you 
could take Rose herself.” 

“ I think I will,” I exclaimed. “ If she were of 
age I would marry her to-morrow morning;” and 
then I went on packing viciously, for my holiday 
and my summer happiness were both over. Our 
island belonged to us no longer — our secret was 
shared by others — the world and the world’s opinion 
had stepped inside our paradise, and that serpent of 
modern society, Mrs, Grundy, had given us to eat of 
the apple of the knowledge of good and evil, and 


/ SEE SIR HUMPHREY. 


95 


told us we must wander no more through Eden, till 
I could show a balance at my banker’s, a house 
suitably furnished, an income of so much per an- 
num, and a life insurance which I could undertake 
to keep up for the benefit of my wife and children. 

Correct possibly, but unpleasant. I thought so 
then, I think so now. 

My last matrimonial experiment was carrie<l 
out on Mrs. Grundy’s own plan in all particulars, 
and as the world, which likes to have a finger in 
every man’s pie, is perfectly satisfied with its results 
there can be no reason to doubt but that I was and 
am wrong, and Mrs. Grundy right. 

Next day I left Cromingford, but before I went 
I had a long talk and walk with Rose. 

To this of course my father objected, but Joan 
over-ruled his objection, for which I blessed her. 

During that walk I told Rose everything. It is 
one of the characteristics of true love, I take it, 
that a man shall pour out his whole heart to the 
object of his adoration, let her be girl or woman 
— let her be capable of quite comprehending the 
position, or only able to grasp it through her sympa- 
thies. 

My pet was little better than a child, yet sin 
understood me. 

“ It is not papa I am afraid of, but mamma,” Rob< 
said. “ Oh ! Tom, make the best of it you can.” 

The darling had always lacked moral courage 
and this speech meant simply, "Show them you 
hopes for certainties.” 


96 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


Oh, love ! oh, sweet ! if God had been only 
pleased to create you a little stronger, you would 
have been perfect. As it is, you carried with you 
the human taint, which merely made me love you 
more. 

For you were weaker even than I, my treasure, 
and a man likes to feel the arms that clasp his neck 
do not belong to quite an angel. 

“ Even if they refuse, will you love me. Rose 1” 
I asked, and she answered, “ Till death, Tom !” 
and, my darling, weak as He made you, the promise 
was kept 

So I went, but before I went my father and I 
were reconciled. 

"If I have said anything disrespectful, sir,” I 
remarked, " I am sorry.” 

" If I seemed harsh, Tom, it was only for your 
good,” he replied. “ I wish you all speed in your 
wooing, for I know no girl in the whole world I 
would rather see your wife than Rose Surry.” 

" Thank you, father,” I said humbly. 

" All I desire on earth,” he went on, " is my 
children’s happiness, compassed honourably.” 

" I hope you wRl never have cause to blush for 
one of us,” I answered ; and then we shook hands, 
as is the manner of male creatures in England, and 
I departed. 

Do you smile, reader, at all this ? Ah 1 believe 
me it is a fine thing to have a gentleman tor one’s 
father; I do not mean with a hundred ancestoi's, 
or a hundred thousand pounds in money, but 


/ SEE STR HUMPHREY, 


simply a gentleman, with a gentleman’s simplicity, 
hoiiour, and truth. 

The fact did not do much for me, you will remark, 
ere this tale is finished, but you are wrrong. It has 
stood me in good stead professionally, and the lessons 
of honour my father inculcated and taught us, not 
merely by precept, but example, helped us to fight 
the battle of life more bravely and more honestly 
than would otherwise have been the case. 

Sir Humphrey and Lady Surry were expected to 
pass through London in the course of a few days, 
and Rose gave me the address of the baronet’s 
sister, with whom they generally stayed when in 
town, so that there proved no necessity for me to 
take the journey I had at first contemplated, namely 
to Paris, in order to face the parents, who would, I 
felt confident, try to separate me and Rose. 

On my return to town, my first care was to 
present myself in Queen Anne Street, whence Mrs. 
Graham had departed, having left London the 
previous day for Tunbridge "Wells. As I had 
nothing to keep me in London, I followed her 
thither, and was welcomed most enthusiastically. 
How did it happen that I had tired of Cromingford 
so soon ? To see me at that time of the year was 
the lasfc thing Mrs. Graham stated she anticipated. 
Perhaps, the old lady went on archly, I intended 
joining the Sherlocks, who were gone to the Isle of 
Wight, as of course I knew — 

Of course, indeed, I knew, for Mr. Sherlock had 
invited me to spend some time with them at Vent- 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


9a 

nor, but I bad not the slightest intention of accept- 
ing his hospitality, and so I informed Mrs. 
Graham. 

“ 1 am not sorry to hear it,” she replied, " I am 
not quite sure that I like Catherine Sherlock, or 
that I think she would make a good wife. She 
has her temper, or I am mistaken. Poor Puck 
(Puck was the poodle before honourably mentioned, 
a fat, lazy, pampered brute, that I cordially hated, 
and would have kicked had I dared) got his paw 
in a black lace flounce she wore one evening 
when she camd to me, and tore it, and you should 
have seen how she looked. Of course you are 
not offended at my warning you.” 

“ I assure you,” I answered, “ Miss Sherlock or 
her temper is nothing to me.” 

“ Well, she wishes you were something to her,” 
replied Mrs. Graham, “ and at one time I certainly 
thought it might be a good match for you, but I 
hear they are living beyond their means, and that 
the girls will not have a sixpence.” 

“ I am afraid that is a way nice girls have,” I 
said. 

“It is a very serious drawback, however,” 
remarked Mrs. Graham; “take my advice, Tom, 
and never marry without some money, at all 
events.” 

“ I should not like to marry without some money, 
certainly,” I answered, “ since manna has ceased to 
fall from heaven ; but the fortune will certainly 
require to be on my side, since the only girl I 


I SEE SIR HUMPHREY. 


99 


care for in the world in tliat way has not, and 
never will have, a penny.” 

“ I am very sorry to hear it,” said my auditor 
emphatically. 

“ I am not aware that there is any particular cause 
for sorrow,” I replied. “ We can wait.” 

“ Then you are really engaged.” 

^ Really engaged. I mean in a few days to ask 
her father’s consent, which will of course be 
refused, but we must wait until he likes to give 
it.” 

“ And why should he refuse his consent ? What 
is there against you T 

I am not aware that there is anything against 
me as an individual,” I answered ; “ but the Surrys 
are much bigger people than ever the Luttrells 
were, even in their best days, and very probably 
Sir Humphrey may look higher for his daughter 
than a struggling barrister. I know 1 should were 
I in his shoes.” 

“You mean the people that live at Old Court. 
Upon my word. Master Tom 

But there was no rebuke in her tone, nay, 
rather it sounded almost exultant, as she added — 

“ And pray how long has this been going on ?” 

“ All my life, I fancy — at least, all my life since 
I first saw Rose — ever since she was a little thing 
like that,” and I drew out Joan’s copy of Mr. 
Tullett’s portrait, and presented it to Mrs. Graham, 
who first put on her spectacles and then examined 
the face of mv child love critically. 


100 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


When she had looked it all over she returned me 
the sketch without a word. 

After that pause she said, “ I am afraid you have 
not been quite so thoughtful as you ought about 
Miss Sherlock. She certainly had reason to believe 
you cared for her.” 

“ What reason T I asked. 

“ Why you were always with them — with her — 
and you paid her attentions — and — and I am sure I 
thought you meant something serious.” 

“ I am very sorry to hear you say so,” I replied. 

“Yes, it is unfortunate,” remarked Mrs. Graham, 
“ but now you had better leave me : I shall miss 
my afternoon nap if you stay gossiping here any 
longer — and I want to think over what you have 
told me quietly -you have done foolishly, Tom, but 
I am not angry.” 

Which was attributable, as Joan subsequently 
suggested, when she and I came to talk the matter 
over, to the fact of Rose being a baronet’s daughter. 
The one desire of the old lady’s life had been for 
years, that a Luttrell should do well in the world. 

“ And it would help you enorijiously,” she said to 
me the next day, “ to marry into such a family as 
that.” 

“ Oh ! aunt,” I cried, for the pain of hearing 
Mrs. Grundy screaming in my ear was more than I 
could endure, “if Rose were the daughter of a 
labourer I should love her just the same, and I wish 
she were, for we could then marry at once.” 

“ Romance,” she answered, “ all romance ) Love 


I SEE SIS HUMPHREY, loi 

is all very well, Tom, but believe me, success is 
better.” 

In her heart did she think so I wonder, she who 
had nothing to love save parrot and poodle. 

Whatever, however, her private opinions on that 
subject may have been, there could be no question 
of her approval of my choice. If there were times 
when qualms came over her, concerning Miss 
Sherlock’s disappointment, and the share she might 
have had in causing it, these were but specks on the 
brightness of the rising grandeur and wealth she 
pictured as certainties for me. 

“ Tell Sir Humphrey Surry,” she said, " that 
I, Blanche Graham, born Luttrell, will, if he consent 
to your marrying his daughter, make you my heir. 
With that prospect and your profession, you may 
seem a desirable farii in the eyes of any man of 
Sir Humphrey’s means. There I want no thanks. 
I should have done the same for Joan had your 
parents’ selfishness not refused her to me. Do not 
interrupt, Tom, I always shall think and say, it 
was selfish when they had so many, that they 
could not spare me. one.” 

“But, aunt, Joan was as dear to them as any 
one of the others.” 

“ I never said she was not,” retorted Mrs. Graham 
“ What I do say is, that they might have humoured 
my whims, after all 1 had done for your father, t oo 
> — but still I am not sure that it has not all turiiL.^ 
out for the best — I like you now better than I could 
ever have liked a girl; and if you many this young 


102 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


creature and bring her home to me, I shall forgive 
your father.” 

Bring her home — there was a frightful notion 
— in fancy I beheld my darling mewed up in 
Queen Anne Street, with tLe bipeds and quadrupeds 
mentioned at an earlier point in this story, but I did 
not mean to lose every point in the game by evincing 
the horror wherewith Mrs. Graham’s casual remark 
filled me, neither did I intend — supposing Rose 
agreed — and I knew she would, the darling — to 
disappoint or act in any way unfairly towards one 
who offered to do so much for us. 

Although I had looked forward to having Rose all 
to myself in some pretty home — no matter how 
homely — still I felt it was better to have her in 
Queen Anne Street than not at all, and so fortified 
with many Godsends and good wishes, 1 returned to 
London, and sought that interview in Devonshire 
Place which was, as I erroneously imagined, to 
decide my fate. 

In this I chanced, however, to be mistaken ; Sir 
Humphrey — or to speak more correctly, Lady Surry 
— for it was she who made every bullet which the 
old baronet fired — said neither no nor yes. I was 
not objected to on the score of either birth or 
fortune — but Rose was young — too young to enter 
into any engagement involving the whole of her 
future happiness. At the end of, say two years, I 
had permission to name the subject again, meantime 
I was not to see her clandestinely, neither were we 
to correspond. 


/ SEE SIR HUMPHREY, 


103 


How I rebelled against these conditions it is 
needless to tell. I prayed, I entreated, but I might 
as well have, prayed and entreated a statue as Lady 
Surry ; and Sir Humphrey, now rapidly falling 
into poor health, wa,s but a mere tool in the handt; 
of his wife. 

“ It is mamma — it is all mamma,” said Rose, at 
the parting interview which Lady Suiiy graciously 
permitted ; “ but never mind, Tom, the two years 
will not be very long in passing. Think of all the 
years we have known each other already, and if I 
am not to see you I shall see Joan, and if I am not 
to write I will send you messages through her.” 

And so we kissed and separated; and I went 
back to London, and worked harder than ever at 
my profession ; and although Mr. Sherlock was cool 
for a little time, still he soon relented, and put what 
briefs he could in my hands. 

I know now he believed the Surry alliance 
would never come to anything. I know now Lady 
Surry merely entertained my proposals to the slight 
extent I have related, to the end that if no better 
suitor offered. Rose, in the event of her father’s 
death, might not be left unprovided for. But at 
the time I was in blessed ignorance of everything, 
save the fact that when two years had expired I 
should be free to speak again, and, as I hoped, to 
some purpose. 

" If I can only get employed in some great case,” 
I thought, “my fortune is made.” But though 
great cases came, and were tried, and caused a noise 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


m 

in the world, my name never figured as counsel for 
either side. 

I was young, I was almost unknown — there 
were plenty of abler men in the field — ^yet I did 
not despair. What though the fire of fortune was 
not yet kindled on my hearth — love still kept my 
heart warm — hope still sustained me. 

K the path to success were rough and tedious, I 
felt, nevertheless, that I was treading it ; and in my 
chambers, where I sat all alone night after night, 
eschewing company, and studying harder than man, 
I think, ever worked before, I had sweet visions of 
the fame and wealth which was to crown all my 
endeavours. Fame I only then desired, to gain 
Rose for me — wealth I only longed for, that I might 
keep her like a queen — my love. 

And so a year passed, and my probation was 
twelve mouths nearer its close. 


CHAPTER. VITL 

Joan’s lover. 

I N the many letters which Joan found time to 
write to me during that year — and especially 
towards the close of it — there occurred so frequently 
the name of a certain Walter Surry, that, at length 
becoming curious on the subject, and also slightly 
jealous, I asked my sister to favour me with some 
information concerning the gentlemaii in question, 
and also how it happened that he seemed to be so 
much in the neighbourhood, and so constantly with 
Rose. 

By the next possible post Joan’s answer came, 
" You need not he at all uneasy about Rose” she 
italicised; “Rose is devoted to you; would never 
think of anyone else ; and Mr. Walter Surry only 
cares for her as a cousin.” 

“ Then I suppose he cares for you not as a cousin,” 
I suggested in reply; but to this there came no 
answer. From that day Joan mentioned his name 
as seldom as possible, and, putting the two things 

8 


MY FIRST LOVE. 


io6 

together, I gathered that at last my sister was 
“ hit,” and that Mrs. Graham would probably ere 
long have good reasons for believing the “ Luttrells 
were,” to quote her favourite expression, “ going to 
hold up their heads again, and be heard of once 
more in the world.” 

But I kept Joan’s secret as she had kept mine, 
only waited patiently for results. 

Walter Surry was the only son of that Gilbert 
to whom Sir Geoffrey left Grayborough Castle, and 
the estates and lands thereunto appertaining, 
which were valuable ; together with the expression 
of a hope, which proved abortive, that eventually 
Gilbert would succeed to the title. 

Gilbert did not succeed ; he died within a very 
short time after his brother, and the estates and 
prospective title devolved consequently upon his 
only child, Walter, then a boy about my own 
age. 

During his minority Grayborough Castle was left 
unoccupied, but now, after some years of foreign 
travel, Walter had taken up his abode there, and 
received much goodly company, his parties being 
matronized by his mother — a woman still hand- 
some, Joan informed me, and very different indeed 
from Lady Surry. 

Which, being translated, meant that Joan con- 
sidered Mrs. Surry as agreeable as she thought 
Lady Surry the reverse. 

To two of the balls which were given at Gray- 
borough Joan was invited, and she sent me glow^ing 


JOANNS LOVER. 


107 


accounts of the splendour of the house and the 
beauty of the ladies — of the kindness which had 
been shown to her and my father, and the exceed- 
ing grace with which Walter Surry went through 
a quadrille. 

What was there that man could not do bettej- 
than anyone else, according to Joan’s report ? He 
could ride, shoot, swim, sing, dance in a more perfect 
manner than man ever did before. “ My duets 
never sounded the same until Mr. Surry sang the 
second with me.” “I have just returned from a 
long ride with Rose and Mr. Surry. Rose was 
afraid to gallop — but we had such a race over 
Wildmoor Common,” and so forth. Clearly the 
hero had come, and J oan’s heart was gone irrecover- 
ably. 

Although at first I could scarcely believe that she 
had made so mighty a conquest, yet, remembering 
her rare beauty, I did not as time went on feel 
astonished at the affair. 

Walter Surry, though young, had nevertheless 
probably seen enough of the world to disgust him 
with fashionable dames ; and the originality, talent, 
and simplicity which distinguished Joan had no 
doubt attracted him towards her. 

To me, of course, it appeared strange that any 
man should care for Joan when Rose was present, 
but I adopted my sister’s view of the affair with- 
out question, remembering her wonderful faculty 
of penetration, and rested content, resolving, 
however, that when I went down to Cromingford 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


loS 

for my summer holiday I would try whether, if no 
actual engagement existed, Mr. Surry could not be 
brought to the point. 

Spite of my own delay and shyness in making 
my declaration, I always distrusted a man who in 
love matters hung fire, and I felt vaguely uneasy 
as letter alter letter arrived from J oan and made 
no mention of his having said anything particular. 

" If he be playing with her it will break 
Joan’s heart,” I thought, and by way of warning, 
I just ventured in a postscript to ask if Mr. Surry 
were anything of a fiirt. 

In answer to that question I received a manu- 
script — for I cannot call it a letter — which I would 
now reproduce, were sufiicient space at command for 
the purpose. 

Therein Joan recounted all the acts of the Surrys 
since time immemorial, and there was no word in 
all that chronicle of the baronets of Graysborough 
concerning a jilted or heart-broken woman. 

Grand men were the Surrys, according to Joan s 
report — noble they had been since the beginning — 
even poor Sir Humphrey did his best to make a 
detestable wife happy, and what, then, could I mean 
by my question ? 

Keplying to which appeal I said I had meant 
nothing, and Joan was pleased graciously to 
receive my statement as perfectly and undeniably 
true. 

" But you will see him when you come down, 
Tom,” she remarked, just as if the sight of Walter 


yOAATS LOVER, 109 

Suny were likely to afford the slightest pleasure 
to me. 

It wanted but a week or so to the time I had 
arranged to leave London, and go for my long 
annual visit to Cromingford, when, in the midst 
of the bright sun-shiny weather, I heard the first 
growl of the storm that soon burst over us. 

There came a rumour one morning to the effect 
that the great Indian house of Hollington, Carr, 
Byrne & Co. had stopped; and I, knowing a 
considerable portion of Mrs. Graham’s fortune had 
been left in that establishment, walked down to the 
city in order to satisfy myself there was nothing 
really in the report. 

Of course all sorts of stories were afloat. Some 
said Hollingtons were good as the Bank of Eng- 
land ; others that Hollingtons had long been 
shaky ; some that the repori would be contradicted 
in the next day’s Times ; some that the ruin would 
be found to be more complete and wide-spread than 
people at all imagined. 

Of course the prophets of evil were right — there 
rarely is smoke without fire — and next day, in the 
money article, appeared a formal notice of the 
failure of that well-known firm. 

At first I hardly grasped the full import of the 
announcement. Indeed I scarcely knew enough of 
Mrs. Graham’s concerns to be aware that the bulk 
of her large fortune had gone down with Holling- 
ton’s ship, and I shall never forget the sick heav}’ 
misery that oppressed me when, seated in Queeu 


AfV FIRST LOVE. 


I to 

Ann A Street, my relation, with tears and lamenta- 
tions, declared she was a beggar — that she might 
IS well go to the workhouse • at once — that of 
30urse everything now was ended between Rose 
Surry and me, that she could do nothing for her- 
self, and consequently nothing for me, on whose 
advancement she had set her heart. 

I sat there and listened — sat there in the midst 
of her curiosities, her carved idols from India, her 
knick-knacks from China, her shells, her figures, her 
japanned work and bon-bon boxes, her ancient 
furniture — dimly comprehending a crisis had come, 
that the last air palace of my erection was 
vanishing like its predecessors. 

In my selfishness, at first I had scarcely a 
thought to spare for the poor old woman to whom 
money, and the things money could buy, had 
always seemed so precious — who had valued success 
so highly, and who now sat wringing her yellow 
wizened hands, and repeating that she would have 
to go to the workhouse, for there would never be a 
penny saved. 

And there never was ; but with the few thous- 
ands she stiU possessed, and which had happily 
been invested in the funds, I eventually purchased 
an annuity that enabled her to keep on the house 
in Queen Anne Street, and to live there without 
any perceptible diminution of stateliness and pre- 
tension. 

To do her justice, she fought against my advice, 
and would have left her home to take up her abode 


JOAN'S LOVER. 


in 


in a smaller mansion, so that the principal she still 
retained might come to me at her decease, but I 
insisted on having my own way, and after she had 
made her unselfish offer, I think the old lady was 
rather glad to keep the goods the gods sent her, 
and to take at the same time immense credit for 
her purposed generosity. 

All this, however, is in advance of my story, for 
on the fine summer’s morning when I heard all she 
had to say, I do not think I could have proposed a 
plan for her future support, had any one told me I 
should be hung if I failed to strike one out. I 
could think of nothing, feel nothing but Rose, and 
the fact that the prospective fortune which had 
exercised so large an influence in persuading Lady 
Surry not to listen to my proposals, was lost, lost 
hopelessly, needlessly. 

True it may be said I was no worse off than in 
the days when, standing under the apple trees, I 
told my love tale; but I was just this much 
worse, I had led Sir Humphrey to think I stood on 
a certain equality of wealth, with good prospects, 
and every chance of eventually attaining to a good 
position and standing in life. I had not said, “ I 
have nothing but my profession,” but I had said, 
" I have every chance of rising at the bar, and in 
addition, Mrs. Graham will make an immediate 
settlement on my wife, and leave me the bulk of 
her fortune at her death.” 

And now, after a year, I was not a step nearer 
legal success, so far as an outsider could judge, and 


112 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


I was minus the fortune, and Rose was twelvemonths 
older. 

I thought I should go mad as all this swept 
through and through my brain, keeping a sort of 
time and measure to the poor ruined woman’s sense- 
less lamentation. Once the notion of going quietly 
down to Old Court, before it was known there 
that the failure of Hollingtons involved my aunt, 
and persuading Rose to elope, crossed my mind, but, 
alas ! the days we lived in were not those in which 
I could carry off my beloved to Gretna in a chaise 
and pair. 

And supposing they had been, and that I had 
carried her off, and found money to pay the ex- 
penses of the journey, and the blacksmith for his 
services, and the other incidental matters which no 
doubt made a marriage even at Gretna as uncom- 
fortable an affair as it usually proves in England, 
how was I to earn a sufficient income to take 
that inevitable stucco and lath and plaster villa 
before alluded to, and furnish it, and pay servants’ 
wages, and the baker and the butcher and the 
grocer and the milkman, to say nothing of other 
tradesmen and tax-collectors. 

The money question seemed for a time to have 
lain comparatively quiet, and behold now in a 
moment was its venomous head upreared again, its 
forked tongue spitting poison at me all the while 
Mrs. Graham recited her dirge. 

"There is nothing for me but the workhouse, 
and you will have to give up Rose.” 


JOANNS LOVER. 


113 

Y’es, I knew that — knew it without her telling 
me. It was my bounden duty, having toiled for a 
year vainly, and seeing the end more remote than 
ever, to relinquish the love of my life. If they 
would only grant me another year, I thought — if 
only — but I knew Lady Surry too well even for 
hope to deceive me ; and I went down to Croming- 
ford a dejected and heart-broken man. 

There, fresh troubles awaited me. Affairs had 
latterly not been going well either at the mills or 
about the farm. With no one except Joan to help, 
(for the only one of my brothers who was old 
enough to prove of much assistance, had neither 
sufficient brains nor sufficient steadiness to drop 
into the place I had, unfortunately, left vacant,) 
things could scarcely be properly attended to ; and 
besides, for two previous years there had been bad 
crops, and milling had barely paid its own expenses. 
As if this were not enough, that very spring a 
disease had broken out amongst our cattle, and 
cariied off the best of all the milch cows ; and 
when affairs were at the very worst, Mr. Reemes 
died, and his heir was already demanding the re- 
payment of that two thousand pounds, with 
interest, which had for three years fallen, not totally, 
but a little, behind. 

“ I was, indeed, going to ask Mrs. Graham for 
assistance,” said my father ; “ but when your letter 
arrived, I had to abandon that idea, and look our 
position in the face ; and having looked at it, Tom, 
and considering that it* I were to die, there is no one 


AfV FIRST LOVE. 


1 14 

to take the management, I think we had better sell 
off everything, pay our debts, and then — 

“ Then what, father I asked. 

"There will be, perhaps, something left,” he an- 
swered ; " enough till the younger ones get up a 
little, and the boys must work; they will never 
learn to work here, or to be good for anything 
but strolling about the fields, setting snares, and 
getting into mischief.” 

" I wish I had stayed !” I broke out, passionately 
— ** I wish I had never gone away ; I am of no use 
— ^none at all.” 

" Patience,” he said ; “ it is not of what you are 
now, but of what you will be, Tom, you should 
think.” 

And, not to pain him further, I remained silent, 
though my heart was so full of grief, and dis- 
appointment, and regret, and anger, I could have 
cursed the hour in which I left my home, and went 
away to wander after the pot of gold, I had 
never yet touched, save in my dreams — and that I 
felt at that moment I should never touch, any 
more than I should find the end of that rainbow 
arch where, in nursery tales, that pot of gold is 
supposed to lie concealed. 

At Old Court my interview terminated as might 
have been supposed. Sir Humphrey was heartily 
sorry, and, but for his wife, would, I think, have 
conceded the year I prayed for in which to try 
:iiy fortune. 

It was my own year, after all, I asked, the second 


yOAN^S LOVER. 


ns 

of the two originally granted ; but then, as Lady 
Surry remarked when I reminded her of that fact, 
the circumstances under which this second year 
was granted were now changed, as much as my 
prospects. 

She could not contemplate a marriage for her 
daughter where there was neither money, nor 
even the likelihood of money. Although Rose 
was not accustomed to great affluence, she had 
from her infancy been surrounded by every com- 
fort ; and she put it to me — having so bitterly the 
whip hand. Lady Surry could afford to be reason- 
able and temperate — whether there were even the 
most remote chance of my being ever able to 
support a wife — unless, indeed, she had a large 
fortune of her own — in the style in which she, 
Lady Surry, was confident I should wish ? 

“ Sir Humphrey’s opinion was identical with her 
own,” Lady Surry proceeded. “ They admired the 
candour with which I at once informed them of 
my altered fortunes, and they quite agreed with 
what was evidently my own conviction, namely, 
that the whole affair ought now to be as if it had 
never been.” 

“ As if it had never been,” I repeated, while I 
walked stupidly homeward. “ I wonder if Lady 
Surry knew what she meant herself when she 
uttered that sentence.” 

I asked if I might see Rose once more, but 
Lady Surry thought it would be better not, that 
leave-taking could only distress the poor child 


ii6 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


needlessly. She was sure (there were so many 
things she was sure, and certain, and confident of, 
during that interview) my great love for Rose 
would make me wish to spare her pain and sorrow. 

It had better be by letter, if at all. Lady Surry 
suggested, and I agreed to this, but sent my 
letter to Grayborough, at which place I ascertained 
from Joan, Rose was staying. Lady Suiry had 
not, with aU her certainty, bargained for that move 
on my part, or I am greatly mistaken. 

Before I left Cromingford, however, I saw her 
once, quite by accident. She was riding, not with 
Mr. Surry, but with an older and a handsomer man, 
and my jealous eye noted that he leant over 
towards her, 'and was talking earnestly as they drew 
near to me. They had evidently dropped behind a 
riding party which I met half a mile earlier, and 
he seemed to be availing himself of his opportuni- 
ties.* 

** So be it,” I thought, in my anger ; “ what can 
it matter to me f’ and I would have let her pass 
without even a sign that I saw her, but suddenly 
checking her horse, she turned and followed. 

“ Tom !” I fancy her companion would have given 
a year’s rental to have heard her speak his name 
in that tone. “ Tom, did you not know me ?” 

" Know you !” I repeated ; “ but you must 
remember it is all to be over between us — I am no 
better than a beggar, and you — ” 

"I never thought about the money, Tom,” she 
answered ; “ you got my letter telling you so, did 


yOAATS LOVER. 


117 


you not? I can never care for anyone else— I will 
wait for you till you are a great man — till I am a 
hundred ” — and the dear hand fell on my shoulder, 
and she stooped over her saddle till lier face almost 
touched mine. 

“That gentleman, Rose,” I suggested, wamingly. 

“ I hate him !” she said veliemently, “ I love no 
one but you, and I will love no one else, let them 
say or do what they like. If Mr. Lovell Allen 
choose to go and tell, he can do so. Oh, Tom, I 
am so wretched!” and her eyes filled with tears. 
“ I wish I were a child again, and could run away 
and hide from it all.” 

“ Rose,” I began, steadily enough, “ I have 
promised your father and mother to hold no 
further communication with you without their 
consent, but, darling, I shall not quite despair if 
only you will do one thing for me — marry no one 
else till after Christmas twelvemopth. If yon 
see me in the church when you are decking it on 
Chris tmas-Eve, you will know I mean to speak to 
Sir Humphrey again ; if not, you will understand, 
not that I love you less, but that I have tried to win 
you for the second time, and failed!” 

“ I shall be there,” she answered, “ if we are in 
England; if not, I will manage to let you know 
— only it is such a long time — ** 

“ Yes ; but I have such a great deal to do in it,” I 
murmured, and then the little fingers closed on 
mine, and we parted. 


CHAPTER IX. 


SUCCESS. 

I SUPPOSE if any man could review all the 
events of his past life from the top of the 
hill of old age, whereon he is mythically supposed 
at a certain period of his existence to sit down and 
rest, there is not a single act in the whole drama 
which, were the power given to him, he would play 
again in the same manner. 

The whole we can say about the steps we took, 
the paths we adopted, is that to our then judg- 
ment, those steps and those paths seemed the 
best that presented themselves ; but then we will 
probably add in the next breath, “ more is the pity 
that they should have seemed so, since they 
unquestionably led to evil.” Now it was an evil I 
am sure for my father to give up his land and sell 
off everything ; but it seemed to me a good thing 
at the time for him to clear Irimself of worry — ^as 
though any human lot is ever free from worry. 


SUCCESS, 


I19 

It was like tearing an old tree up from the 
ground to try and transplant him, but the trans- 
planting was effected nevertheless. As for my 
mother she liked the idea of returning to London, 
though she disliked the reality much more after- 
wards, and so far as the children went, they were 
wild with delight and non-comprehension. 

J oan, and I, and my father were the three who 
felt the moving most, each one of us perhaps for a 
different reason, but all possibly with equal keen- 
ness. 

We talked about the dreariness of exchanging our 
pretty pla,ce for stuffy London lodgings, but we 
knew it was not so much the change of house or 
home which affected us, but rather the severance 
of all old ties — the impossibility of ever in the 
future re-uniting those connecting links between 
the present and the past which we were then in 
our blindness wrenching asunder. 

By reason of a merciful foresight, Joan coming 
to town with me in order to prepare some place 
wherein our people might lay their heads, imagined 
how it would be, and entreated me to take not 
merely lodgings but some quiet house, with a little 
land, to which a portion of our stock might be 
removed. 

“ London would kill papa now,” Joan said, “ let 
us have a little place anywhere ; one that I can 
manage, where they can go when they are tired of 
this, and the children want a run so as she said it 
was, and I secured a small cottage surrounded by 


120 MV FIRST LOVE, 

about ten acres of land, near Southgate, at a really 
low rent. 

“If the worst come to the worst,” Joan ex- 
plained, “ we can almost feed the children off the 
land; Ido not mean by putting the darlings out 
to graze,” she added, “ but by managing and con- 
triving.” 

Ah ! J oan, though you were not my wife, nor for 
that matter the wife of an3"body in those days, how 
often I have risen up at that country cottage and 
called you blessed, for if 3"ou had not been what you 
were now, could we ever have even with my poor 
help kept our brothers and sisters as we did, and 
cast the sunshine of easy contentment over the 
evening days of those who had been so good to us 
in the helpless years gone by. 

It puzzles me sometimes now, Joan, how you 
have managed so to adopt yourself to different 
means and a different station. When I see you 
driving in your carriage — behold you entering your 
box at the opera, and hear you issuing your orders 
— to any one excepting me, even in the way you 
speak to your husband, there is unconsciously a 
tone of command — I (Cannot but wonder at the 
adaptability and versatility of your sex. You never 
made a sixpence really in your life, and I have a 
few-=— but yet I could no more go in for your 
grand maimer than I could fly. I cannot help 
thanking the splendid creature in plush, who con- 
descends to take charge of my coat when I go to 
lunch with you tete-a-tete in St. James* Square, and 


SC/CCESS, 


121 


how you can order and send him as you do, baffles 
my comprehension. 

But then perhaps the battered sun-bonnet and 
the stolen cherries are less present memories with 
you than with me. 

The faculty of forgetfulness is as great as 
prescience with your sex, my dear — happily. 

On me devolved the trial of seeing the last of 
our dear old home. I went down for the auction. 
I paid off the bill of sale ; I reserved the few things 
we required, the cattle we desired to keep — further, 
I retained an old man who had been in our employ 
for years, to take charge of the live stock, and 
their new home, and “ if you would like to stay 
with them, Sam, you can,” I added ; hearing which, 
Sam, who had neither chick nor child, wife nor 
mother, went straight away, and, disposing of his 
few household gods, adopted ours, and remained 
one of us till his death. 

These are all simple records, friends — but this 
professes to be none other than a simple story — too 
simi)le, I fear, to find favour save with the few who 
like to hear better about still life, and the untragical 
existences most of us lead, than to read concern- 
ing nature’s storms, and the violent crimes and 
passions of our humanity. 

In the plot of a modern Macbeth, of what use 
could Sam seem, save to carry the poisoned bowl, 
or sharpen the fine Damascus steel ? Yet in our 
poor lives he filled in a not unimportant part. 

He carried “home” with him to London. No 

9 


122 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


place would have seemed one to ns without Sam, 
No cow could have calved properly, no sow far- 
rowed, no hen been set, without Sam’s assistance 
and knowledge ; and on my way between Colney 
Hatch Station and Southgate, whitlier I drove in 
a pony cart belonging to the small farm, drawn by 
a pony which, for speed and beauty, could not, 
though I say it, have been matched in the county 
of Middlesex, Sam was wont to entertain me with 
stories of the cattle, the fowls, the dogs, the family, 
that filled me, coming as I did each week from the 
midst of strangers, with an unspeakable delight. 

But all this time I am wandering away from 
Cromingford, where the neighbours were very kind, 
and bought up everything, at good prices — God 
bless them ! — for those prices made all the difference 
to us. As I have said, I satisfied the bill of sale, 
and, as I have not said, I paid aU our debts, small 
and big; and then I gave up the place, walking 
away from it by a long, green, back avenue, which 
led neither to nor from anywhere in particular, 
feeling, as I passed each well-remembered spot, 
that I should never again return to the haunts of 
my boyhood. 

I had some reason then to suppose that at a 
ature time that neighbourhood would retain its 
charms, for hope, as I told Rose, was not quite dead 
within me ; but yet, as I closed the wicket gate 
of the ruined _ entrance I have mentioned, and 
turned back for one last look over the familiar 
scene, I knew I should see the old homestead, with 


SUCCESS. 


123 


the horses being brought back after the day’s 
labour, no more for ever. 

And 1 never have, and I feel confident I nevei 
shaU. 

It did not turn out so badly as might have been 
anticipated, and this fact first induced me to think 
that my father — that we all might have been 
wrong. When, after a man is sold up, lie proves 
considerably more than solvent, it is difficult to 
imagine why such a breaking-up was ever deemed 
expedient. Yet there are more bankrupts than 
those, who feel money dropping from their pockets 
faster than they can shovel it in — men who do not 
fail because money is difficult, or credit an im- 
possibility, but merely because life, at the best, not 
being an easy struggle — they weary of it when 
health begins to fail and energy to subside — they 
weary and sicken of the battle. 

They want peace on any terms ; they Care little 
who wins, so long as. they are permitted to lay 
down their arms — and thus it proved with my 
father. He asserted the fight had been too much 
for him, and he was glad to have done with grim 
debt and grimmer difficulty, and come even to 
London lodgings, which he subsequently exchanged, 
with something more than pleasure, for the cottage 
previously mentioned, whither I had sent some 
of the household stufis, and a few familiar chairs 
and tablef^ that would, I fancied, make the new 
place seem a little like an old home. 

For myself, I took to literature — that usual 

9—2 


124 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


resource of poor briefless men — and earned money. 
I did not earn much ; but visions of fabulous 
wealth, which was to be the proceeds of a certain 
work on which I was then engaged, floated before 
me, making the prosaic two guineas I had once 
approved of, seem like dross in my eyes. 

Were that work — it was one of fiction — to 
appear now, I could make quite enough out of it 
to live on for a year ; but the unhappy thing is, I 
could not write it now. One cannot write a good 
novel twice any more than one can cut an eye- 
tooth ; and, unhappily, the time of life at which one 
does cut an eye-tooth is not usually considered 
favourable to mature judgment — and so one gets 
paid accordingly for one’s first novel, only one cannot 
write that first novel twice, which seems a hard- 
ship. 

Joan, my sole confidante, took occasion, when Rose 
was staying at Gray borough, to inform her of the 
fact of my authorship, and nimiorous letters on the 
subject were interchanged between the pair. 

It was only from Grayborough Rose could 
\vi'ite, Joan informed me, since Lady Surry had 
tabooed their correspondence. 

"Rose does not care, however, so long as her 
mamma does not know,” Joan remarked — as I 
have before observed, my angel’s views on the 
score of strict morality were feminine and some- 
what oblique, — “and Lady Surry never told me not 
to write to her, so I shall as long as I can.” 

But the cones [jondonce, like Rose’s visits to 


SC/CCESS. 


MS 

Grayboorugh, were broken off by another continental 
tour, in which Rose took part, and then I was 
utterly disconsolate — more especially after one day 
when I said to piy sister, 

“ Do you ever hear now from Mr. Surry, Jo^n ?” 
and she suddenly broke out crying. 

“ Never Tom, never. I am afraid I made a 
great mistake, and that it was Rose, after alL” 

Rose after all — ah ! well, love may be a very fine 
passion, but it is also a very selfish one, for I gave 
scarcely a thought to Joan’s trouble as I turned 
away in order to contemplate that fresh trouble 
of my own. Rose, after all, was weak, and he was 
with her continually — he so clever and rich, so 
handsome, so capable of winning love, while I — I 
who loved her as man never loved, was forced to 
stand out in the cold, bearing all this, and, like some 
poor wretch battling with the rigour of a snow- 
storm, to see only at a distance the fibres blazing, 
near which other men could sit enjoying the bright 
glow of the pine logs piled high on the once familiar 
hearth. 

And yet still I never then quite despaired. T 
felt strong in myself — ^felt success might still be on 
the cards for me. Already I was beginning to be 
recognised — time had commenced its work, which, 
though very slow, is very sure, and if I had not got 
very first rate briefs, at least solicitors, some of 
them shrewd enough in their generation, were aware 
of my existence. 

People began to speak to me — people I knew, 


126 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


who, though I recognized them well enough, had 
hitherto regarded me as a stranger and an out- 
sider. 

I had been blest with some small retainers, 1 
was becoming well known in the courts. The 
woman who kept the stall by the gate which leads 
from Chancery Lane, away towards Lincoln ’s-Inn 
Fields, had learnt to know me; I occasionally 
received an invitation to dinner from other men 
than Mr. Sherlock; Dick Tullett, who was even tlien 
rising to eminence, meeting me one day in the 
street, had not disdained to ask me to partake of 
boiled mutton with him (so his modesty put it) on 
the following day, and I went and ate the mutton, 
which turned out to be venison, sent by one of his 
patrons, and was charmed, as may well be imagined, 
with Dick and his surroundings. 

After the venison business, however, I lacked 
courage to invite Dick’s company to a mutton chop 
and pints of the best Burton, which hesitation I 
have reason to believe Dick ascribed to pride on 
my part, believing I earned a fabulous income on 
the “ Weekly Jupiter,” the actual fact being I felt 
afraid of Dick, who knew nobody under a lord, and 
talked about wines as if he had been weaned on 
them. I have tried experiments since upon Dick, 
and find he knows no more about wines than my 
youngest daughter, who if I were writing at home 
at this moment instead of in my chambers, would 
toddle up to me, and taking the pen out of my 
hand, say, “You shall write no more, pa,” which 


SUCCESS. 


I2y 

mandate I always, since the world is altered and 
parents now honour their children, dutifully obey. 

Time still went on as has been before stated. 
It is a way time has, though sometimes when very 
miserable one feels almost inclined to doubt the 
fact ; and summer came again, and another autumn 
foilbwed, and though I thought I was “ getting on ” 
really, yet apparently matters with me remained in 
statu quo. 

I had nothing to take in my hand, so to 
speak, and show Sir Humphrey and Lady Surry. 
My means were still inadequate to maintain a 
wife properly, and ere long it seemed probable I 
should have to assist my father in maintaining 
his family. 

The great brief might come or it might never 
come — and if it did another might never follow. 
My own reason was all on their side of the question, 
but my feeling was all on my own. Had they 
given me a hope of Rose I felt as though I could 
have conquered fate — but then in those days when 
I had a hope of Rose I had not conquered fate — 
the victory had been quite the other way — alas ’ 
for us. 

“The Surrys are in London,” Joan remarked to 
me one morning in that autumn, to which allusion 
has been made, “ I saw Rose and her mother driving 
in the park yesterday, with Mrs. Surry. Rose 
looked pale and worn.” 

It was in my chamber this interview took 
place, and when Joan ceased speaking I made no 


AfV FIRST LOVE. 


12S 

reply, only turned over the scattered papers, putting 
them mechanically in order, one on the top of 
another. 

“What did you say, Tom,” asked my sister, 
after waiting patiently for about a minute. 

“ I said nothing,” I replied. 

“ Then why did you say nothing ?” she retorted. 
“I tell you Rose — our Rose — ^is in London, and 
you stand there like a stock or a stone, answering 
never a word. Has this not gone on long enough, 
Tom ?” she asked passionately. Ah ! J oan, I do 
not believe that passion was evinced altogether in 
my interest. “Are you not going to make an 
effort to see her, to keep her for yourself ?” 

“I promised ,** I was beginning, when Joan 

interrupted with — 

“Then unpromise — ^you should never have done 
anything so ridiculous and quixotic as to pledge 
yourself to adopt any course. Write to Sir Hum- 
phrey, and give him fair warning you mean to use 
every means to win his daughter. The girl is 
breaking her heart for you. I have no patience 
with men,” my sister finished. “ If I were a man, 
and a girl loved me as Rose loves you, I would have 
her, spite of all the parents in England.” 

“No, Joan, you would not,” I replied; “not if 
you loved her ; rather, if you felt you had no pros- 
pect but poverty, no chance of maintaining her in 
anything like the comfort to which she had been 
accustomed, you would say, * God grant she may 
forget and leave the burden to be borne by me.* ” 


SUCCESS. 


129 


"Then why did you ask her to wait for jiou till 
Christmas next V 

"Because I was mad,^ I replied, "because experi- 
ence had not taught me — because I believed in 
myself*, and thought I was strong enough to 
accomplish anything by means of my own clever- 
ness. I see now my mistake — I see, without 
extraneous help, a professional man can do very 
little to push his way. Oh ! Joan,” I added, speaking 
out what had often lately filled my heart, " I wish I 
had never left the farm, never accepted Mrs. 
Graham’s ofier. I used to count the hours till I 
should get away and begin my new career — but it 
was all a mistake, I could have done well for 
myself and all of us, with your help, had I remained 
there. I should have been near Rose, and in that 
case 

"Nothing would ever have changed her,” Joan 
finished, as I paused, “but as matters stand, you 
have left the field open for her cousin. You 
know Rose well enough — so long as she had 
anybody to stand near and protect her, she could 
be brave as I am, but as things are, how can you 
expect her to be firm ? She is everlastingly with 
Walter Surry and his mother, and it is a match 
you may be positive Lady Surry would like, and 
you have pledged yourself not to write or to see 
her, and there can be no doubt but that either 
they are intercepting her letters, or that she is 
changing, for it is more than six months since I 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


130 

had even a line from her, she who used to write 
two or three times a week.” 

“Joan,” I said, “would you have me ask Rose 
to spend all the best years of her life waiting 
for a man who may never be able to marry her 
after all V 

“ There is no use in talking to you, Tom,” she 
answered ; “ I believe, after all, you are fond of that 
hateful Miss Sherlock. I saw you walking down 
Piccadilly with her yesterday. Yes, you may well 
colour ; I did see you, though you were too much 
occupied to notice me. If you lose Rose I shall 
not pity you one morsel. It would not surprise 
me any day to see an account of her marriage in 
the paper.” 

“ It would surprise me greatly,” I answered ; but 
even while I spoke my conscience accused me of 
falsehood. 

I knew I should not be surprised — I knew I 
should have no right to feel so. And yet, spite of 
this knowledge, I hoped on, believing in my 
darling’s constancy, and only really dreading the 
coming of that Christmas Eve when I had told 
her she would understand by my presence or absence 
how it was to be between us in the future. 

And yet what right had I any longer to thmst 
my wretched prospects between her and fortune ? 
For any one, even for my Rose, Walter Surry, 
from a pecuniary point of view, was a capital 
match ; further, according to Joan, this paragon had 
been endowed by Heaven with every gentlemanly 


SUCCESS. 


131 

grace and manly virtue. True, he had led Joan 
astray as regarded his feelings towards her; but 
I could well understand that, if he loved Rose, he 
would like Joan for Rose’s sake, and comprehend, 
with his knowledge of the world, that the best way 
to destroy her attachment for me was to patronise 
my family, and afford her ample opportunities for 
contrasting the narrow means of our poor home 
with the glories of Grayborough. 

Afterwards I knew in all this I had made a 
mistake, and that at the time he was perfectly un- 
conscious I was an object of the slightest interest 
to Rose, or Rose to me ; but it is difficult at any 
period of one’s life to understand that one’s actual 
existence is a matter of the supremest indifference 
to a great many people on earth, and this is doubly 
difficult to realise when one first starts on the race, 
and being new to the course, fancies that every 
man’s eye is watching to note the result. 

There is one thing I can honestly say, however — 
namely, that if I were an object of indifference to 
Walter Surry, he was by no means an object of 
indifference to me.- I thought of him waking, I 
dreamed of him sleeping, and always in my dreams 
he seemed to me mixed up with that Lovell 
Allen, of whom Rose had spoken so bitterly. 
Sometimes the one changed into the other — some- 
times I confused Lovell Allen’s face with that of 
Walter Surry ; but always those two men were 
associated in my mind together, and have remained 
80 associated ever since. 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


As Cliiistmas drew near, my nights grew more 
disturbed, my days more restless ; I could attend to 
nothing properly ; the little work I had was 
neglected ; I could not write, I could not read ; the 
very printers’ devils I had once been so rejoiced to 
welcome, whom I had requested with such courtesy 
to seat themselves in my vestibule whilst I com- 
pleted an article, and rewarded with numerous six- 
pences for dropping off to sleep during their stay, 
were now dismissed summarily and empty, both as 
regarded copy and gratuities. 

When Mr. Sherlock’s managing clerk came over 
with a brief in some trumpery case that was to be 
tried at the Guildhall, I failed to receive him with 
those evidences of gratitude which he had come 
really to regard as his due ; and never suspecting 
the cause of my indifference, he went back and told 
his employer he thought Mr. Luttrell must be get- 
ting on, for he did not seem to care about such 
small things now. 

But in an hour, in a minute, everything was 
changed — green leaves budded from barren stems, 
flowers decked the fields — the sun poured his 
warmest beams into the room where I sat beside 
my wintry fire. 

One day there came a brief — the brief of all 
others I could have desired. The great case of 
Aylesbury v. Montford and others, which filled the 
newspapers for weeks, and occupied public atten- 
tion to an almost unheard of extent, was coming on 


SUCCESS. 


133 


for trial, and to my humble room — to my chambers 
in Staple’s Inn, was sent a brief. 

The leader on our side was Mr. Seijeant MacNeill, 
since raised to the peerage, and I was next to him. 

Fortune had relented at last, the ball was at my 
foot, the tide had turned, and might bear my poor 
tossed bark to wealth and Rose Surry after aU. 

I never paused to enquire how it had come or 
wh}^ but, like a giant refreshed, arose and faced 
once more the life I had but a few moments before 
thought not worth living — faced it as a man 
restored after long sickness to health looks out on 
the world with a new sense of its beauty, with a 
keener appreciation of its loveliness. 

At what age, I wonder, does a man, so long as 
he has the chance of happiness stretching away 
before him, cease to be a fool. I was a fool that 
day when the brief in Aylesbury’s case arrived. 
Already I saw retainers pouring in, and heard 
myself talking, the observed of all observers ; 
already I prophetically beheld publishers offering 
me fabulous sums for my next new work ; already 
wealth was mine — and fame. 

It has all come since — aU my soul then thirsted 
for — sufficient wealth, comparative fame, briefs more 
than I desire to see — such celebrity, or shall we 
rather say notoriety, as is to be won by him who 
addresses his Lordship and an intelligent and en- 
lightened jury. People great enough in their way, 
and high up in the social scale, like to see me at 
their dining tables, while my wife’s basket is filled 


*34 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


with "At Homes,” and invitations to various ex- 
cuses for bringing people together and making them 
uncomfortable. And yet, behold the end, my dear 
young friends — after all, when you ask me for a 
story, behold I can find none so near my heart as 
that of my " First Love,” for whose dear sake 1 
‘doried in that brief, for whose satisfaction I 
already mentally won the case, after a magnificent 
speech following that of Mr. Serjeant MacNeill. 

I went to my poor aunt and told her success 
had come at last, whereupon the dear old creature 
burst into tears of mingled pride and affection, and 
fcold me I was the only thing she had to live for. I 
then journeyed to Southgate, and carried the good 
news thither. 

Ah ! heaven, who on this earth would be lonely, 
if he could but know all the pleasures his success 
is capable of carrying to those who can love, but 
have no power of winning success for themselves. 
I cannot imagine anything so barren as victory, if 
the victor have to wear his laurels solitary amongst 
strangers — if he have no kith nor kin to rejoice with 
him, to feel their hearts stirred when the thousands 
clap, and the crowd cheers — when they behold him 
who is of their lineage, whose blood is identical 
with their own, bowing the hearts of the men of 
Israel as the heart of one man. 

“ There is only one thing wanting,” Joan whis- 
pered, as she came with me to the door. 

“On Christmas-Eve, please God,” I answered, 
and I went exulting out into the night. 


SUCCESS. 


135 


But long ere Christmas-Eve it pleased God to 
stretch my dear father on a bed of sickness, and 
for days and days his life hung by such a thread 
that, spite of my love and my longing, I could not 
leave his side. 

He did not, of course, know where my heart 
was, and while he kept continually asking for Tom 
when I was out of the room, and holding my hand 
while I was in it, how could I leave, even to keep 
faith with her whom I loved better than father, 
or mother, or brother, or sister, loving each one and 
all of them no less the while. 

But I sent a special messenger down to Old 
Court witli a letter, and instructions to deliver it 
into Miss Surry’s own hands, which he did— only it 
chanced to be into the hands not of Rose, but of 
another Miss Surry, who ordinarily resided in 
Devonshire Place, but who chanced then to be 
staying on a visit with her brother. This lady, 
after reading, carried the epistle to Lady Surry, 
and the pair agreed to keep its contents and its 
advent a secret from Rose — whom it would only, 
so they said, unsettle. 

Long afterwards we knew this, when in the 
future we came to compare notes — when Rose, 
sitting in this very room, told me how she had 
gone to the church, and watched and waited — 
waited even in the churchyard after every one else 
was gone — only to return home disappointed. 

And they knew it, those women— knew the 
travail of her heart for one they had striven to 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


make her believe unworthy — knew I was constant 
all the while — knew that then, just as tenderly and 
truly as when we stood in my father’s orchard 
whispering our vowc» — I loved Rose, and Rose loved 
me. 


CHAPTER X. 

WHAT SUCCESS BROUGHT TO ME. 

I T was the second week in the new year before 
I could get away, that is before my father was 
pronounced out of danger — and then I really 
ought not to have left, because I knew every 
moment of my time should, properly speaking, have 
been devoted — not to love — but to the great cause 
of Aylesbury v. Montford and others. To rest, 
however, any longer without seeing Rose, was, I 
felt, impossible. There had been a period during 
that weary probation when I turned my thoughts 
from her, and swore to myself I would forget my 
madness and my disappointment ; but now when 
hope had returned, when the past was again 
present, and the dream just capable of fulfilment, 
how should I longer refrain ? 

There was a hunger and a thirst on me to behold 
my darling. I could have cried aloud for delight 
when 1 found the early express speeding me on- 
ward. I talked to my fellow passengers, I lent one 

10 


138 


MV FIRST LOVE, 


old gentleman the Times , — I gave another a share 
of my travelling rug. I was amiable even concern- 
ing politics, and forbore from thrusting my con- 
servative flag under the eyes of an unmitigated 
radical, who treated us to a dissertation on the 
then absorbing question of the day. 

What did I care about the frost and snow : 1 
liked them. There was a bracing exhilaration in 
the air; the wind was crisp and fresh. So much 
of my life had lately been spent in a sick room, 
and a sick house, that I felt like a prisoner let 
loose, while speeding away to Cromingford. 

The station was nearly a mile from the village, 
and of course there were no vehicles of any kind 
awaiting the arrival of the train ; so I left my 
bag at the station, with direction that it should 
be forwarded to the '' Green Man and Still,” by 
one of the porters, and pursued my way on foot 
to that unambitious hostelry. 

Everywhere the frozen snow lay thick. It 
sparkled on the leaves of the holly in the hedges ; it 
covered the fields ; it clothed the upper portion of 
each elm bough. But the sun shone brightly, 
and the birds twittered, and the ground was crisp 
and firm below my tread ; and it seemed to me as 
though my boyhood, and the hopes and the purposes 
thereof, had returned, while I walked rapidly to- 
wards the village. 

Before I reached it, there fell upon my ears the 
sound of the bells I remembered so well, ringing 
for some village wedding; and when I came in 


WHAT SUCCESS BROUGHT TO ME. I39 


sight of the church, I saw that the graveyard was 
fuH of idlers, and that on the green were collected 
knots of persons, who seemed gathered to see the 
bridal. 

“ Happy may they be,^^ I thought to myself ; but 
at that very moment I caught sight of three or four 
carriages drawn up under the lime trees near the 
church gate, and — why, I know not, I . never could 
tell — my heart gave first a great bound of fear, 
and then seemed as suddenly to stand still. 

^^You seem to be very merry at Cromingford 
to day, my friend,” I said, to an old labourer, whom 
I passed, and who was standing like the rest, to 
see the show. How I ever got the words out, I do 
not know, for my tongue seemed to be cleaving to 
the roof of my mouth. I was parched like one who 
had been wandering through some arid desert. 

Yes, sir; it is our young lady’s wedding day, 
and there are to be great doings at the Court to- 
night, the like of which have never been known in 
these parts.^^ 

Young lady — Court,^^ I repeated, in my agony. 

“Yes, sir. Miss Surry is marrying her cousin; 
and a bullock is to be roasted whole at Old Court.^^ 

I pushed him on one side, and ran on. 

Had I reached the church in time I know now I 
should certainly have forbid the wedding, interrupted 
the ceremony ; but as it was, just as 1 entered the 
porch the marriage party were sweeping into the 
vestry. 

I saw people pressing round the bride, kissing, 

10—2 


140 


MV FIRST LOVE. 


shaking hands, wishing her all happiness. I saw 
the bridegroom, tall, stately, exultant. I saw my 
treasure — mine, shrinking a little from the con- 
gratulations — white as her veil, pass to the book, 
where she signed her name, which was to be the same 
as wife as it had been as maiden ; and then feeling I 
could not stand without some support, I leaned up 
against the wall just within the church porch, and 
waited for her coming. 

I did not mean to speak. I only intended that 
she, faithless, should see me faithful, and 1 repented 
me afterwards that I had not fled — I did, oh ! Rose, 
my love. 

After a long time, as it seemed to me, they came 
out, bride and bridegroom first ; she just touching 
his arm ; he bending down triumphantly, and look- 
ing so proud and so happy that I could have 
stricken him dead in my jealous hate. 

But I shrank back from their sight ; if the 
ground had opened and swallowed me up I should 
have been glad, but as it refused I drew more and 
more away from the light to a corner under the 
organ loft stairs, where no eyes but hers could have 
beheld me. 

Suddenly her face changed, and she dropped his 
arm. I see an old friend I must speak to,” I heard 
her say, and next moment the small white-gloved 
hand clasped mine, and there came to my ear the 
piteous moan, “ Oh ! Tom — why did you not come 
before T* 

Then looking in my face like myself she grasped 


IV//AT SUCCESS BROUGHT TO ME. 141 

it. We had both been deeeived, both duped — we 
knew it by intuition then, as we knew it of certainty 
afterwards. 

We must both try to bear it," she went on. 
How brave these women, even the tendercst of them, 
are under the torture — perhaps the tenderer the 
braver. We must both try to bear it. Good- 
bye, Tom, dear !" And the little hand was with- 
drawn, and I saw her, whom I had carried in my 
arms — who should have been mine — mine— pass 
away through the door and down the path — 
his — 

Farther into the darkness I drew back, and when 
the last of the wedding party had defiled out, I crept 
after them into the daylight. 

I did not attempt to follow them. I only stopped 
behind a monument and watched her returning the 
greeting of the villagers, while my heart seemed 
breaking. 

I followed her white dress, till she entered her 
husband's carriage, and I heard the cheer with 
which the crowd greeted the newly-married couple 
as they drove back to Old Court. 

Then I emerged from my post of observation, 
and walking along a path which led in a contrary 
direction, struck off across the fields to walk any- 
where away from her memory. 

The whole aspect of nature seemed changed to 
me in a moment ; it was no longer a bracing, invit- 
ing morning to my idea — the earth was covered 
with a frost, which had blighted flower and beauty — 


142 


MY FIRST LOVE, 


as in a moment flower and beauty had departed 
from my life. 

It was in the early spring I had last trodden those 
field paths, unhappy in my prospects indeed, but 
yet seeing a life before me not destitute of hope ; 
but now, oh ! Lord, but now — success had come, and 
where was she for whom I alone desired success ? 

Where there had been verdure there lay snow; in 
lieu of leaf and promise were bare boughs and 
rotten twigs, while Rose, the only love of my life, 
could be, even in thought, mine no longer. 

And so, thus far, my story is told. So my first 
love passed away from my sight — the wife of ano- 
ther. 


MY LAST LOVE. 



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MT LAST LOVE. 

A SEQUEL. 


CHAPTER L 


after her marriage. 

T hroughout the whole of my professional 
career it has been a comfort to me to re- 
member that when the great case of Montfort v. 
Aylmer was lost, as lost it was, I had no share in the 
disaster. 

To this hour I cannot understand why Montfoi’t 
was beaten, more particularly as when he ultimately 
carried his cause to the House of Lords, he gained 
the day. 

Trifles, as people regard them, influence verdicts. 
The state of the foreman’s liver — the fact of some 
pig-headed juror having dined too late and too well 
the evening preceding — the temper in which another 
entered his matutinal omnibus, said temper being in- 


146 


MV LAST LOVE, 


fluenced by the lateness of breakfast, or a request for 
cash from his wife — these things, and things such as 
these, are sufficient occasionally bo rule the fortunes 
of Caesar, whilst the outer world considers the fault 
lay either with Caesa^r or Caesar’s friends, and cen- 
sures and chides both accordingly. 

Wherefore, the fates having ruled T was to 
achieve no success in love, I felt glad — when I was 
capable of feeling glad about anything — that the 
jade Fortune had not served me the sorry trick of 
taking not only Rose, but the chances of fame and 
wealth also. 

After all, if a man must wear the willow, it is 
as well he should stick it in a decent hat. 

I think there is a good deal of truth in that well- 
worn adage concerning love and cards. For my own 
pai*t I cannot now recall an instance of a man who 
proved a winner in both. The world of course talks 
largely about handsome wives, and lovely children, 
and a princely income, as it talks largely about most 
things appertaining to its favourite sons and daugh- 
ters ; but I, who have listened to as many confidences 
as most, know quite well that to the majority of hu- 
man beings there comes an hour when the devil oi 
luck says, “ How will you take it — ^gold or affection ? 
It is impossible to grasp both — which shall it be V 

Whilst some poor wretches handing the whole of 
their future into the hands of fate, get nothing back 
in exchange — for every rule has its exceptions— and 
there will always be some men and some women 
with whom nothing shall prosper till the end of this 
world’s volume. 


AFTER HER MARRIAGE. 


147 


As I was remarking, it has ever been a comfort to 
me that I had nothing to do with the great case 
of Montfort v. Aylmer. When it came on, and an 
intelligent juiy decided Aylmer should retain pos- 
session of a property to which he had no more title 
than myself, I was lying in Staple’s Inn ill unto 
death, with my mother and Joan tending me. 
Everyone of course said it was the shock of seeing 
Rose another man’s wife which brouefht on the 
fever, for there is a great deal of that sort of folly 
believed, but when I grew better I knew differently. 
It is never so much the shock we receive, as what 
we do after the shock, that stretches us on a sick 
bed. Dick takes to brandy probably, and Harry 
either to starving or dissipation ; I, Tom, walked for 
hours and hours through the snow, which was be- 
ginning to thaw, got thoroughly soaked, and then 
sat in my wet clothes while the night express bore 
me back. to town. 

Arrived in town, I thought to avert all chance of 
illness by a glass of something hot and strong — but 
the remedy either came too late or was not of the 
right kind, for after that night there ensues a blank 
in my memory which has never been thoroughly 
filled up, even by those obliging friends who sub- 
sequently informed me I was delirious for some days, 
and talked a great deal of nonsense ; a feat often per - 
formed, I have since had occasion to remark, by 
people in the enjoyment of thoroughly sound health. 

The first evidence of having recovered my senses 
which I gave was trying to rise and dress, in order 


(48 


MY LAST LOVE 


to assist in the discomfiture of Aylmer ; but as I 
fainted in this endeavour, and as, moreover, the jury 
were deliberating on their verdict at that very time, 
I made no subsequent attempt to appear in the case. 

By slow degrees I realized that weeks had gone 
by whilst I lay unconscious of their passage, that 
Rose’s honeymoon must be over, that as things rush 
on now-a-days, my trouble was an old one, that my 
former life with its hopes, its fantasies, its fears, its 
struggles, was at an end, and that if I were to do 
any good for myself or others in the future life, 
which I could not help living, I must try to forget 
everything connected with that past existence — even 
the sound of the busy mill wheel and the still beauty 
of the woods through which, when the white flowers 
of the wild anemone carpeted them. Rose and I wan- 
dered hand in hand together. 

My mistress was gone — and I knew that if I 
searched the wide world through I should never 
find another love, that could be my love, just as she 
had been — but after all I whispered to myself, when 
at length I felt strong enough to take courage and 
look out over the days that had still to be gone 
through, “ Love is not all — it is not everything.” 

And so far I was right — but ah ! friends, I know 
now love is a great deal. Nevertheless, whether the 
day be cheered by sunshine or darkened by clouds, 
it has to be got through, and it is as well to accept 
whatever sort of weather God send with decent pro- 
priety. 

My day had opened with the loss of Rose — ^and 


AFTER HER MARRIAGE, 


149 


what a loss that was I may never hope to tell ; but 
once I was strong enough to consider the position, 
I determined not to let my sorrow master me. 

There were various ways in which I could have 
shown my regret and evinced the grief I experienced. 
For example, I might have enlisted ; for some in- 
scrutable reason men have been known ere dow to 
adopt this mode of comfort ; I could have cut my 
throat, and so contributed many paragraphs to the 
literature of the country — further, it was competent 
for me to try whether strong waters might not pro- 
duce the same effect as those of Lethe ; or to shut 
myself up like persons I had then read of, and whose 
duplicates I have since known ; or to plunge into 
what people vaguely term a vortex of dissipation ; 
or to indulge in unlimited tobacco, accompanied by 
unlimited beer— -the means required for obtaining 
such consolation not being excessive. But as neither 
enlisting, nor suicide, nor intemperance, nor eccen- 
tricity, was likely to give me Rose, and as further I 
had parents to assist, and brotliers and sisters to 
push on in the world, I thought it best to continue 
in the course I had begun, and to proceed along the 
road I was previously travelling — only without 
Rose. 

Only t well — well — in every life there is its “ but,” 
and its “if,” and its “ only.” 

It was in the cottage near Southgate I fully re- 
gained my strength, for when onOe 1 could bear the 
jolting, my mother and Joan moved me there. 
Never shall I forget the delicious languor — the luxu- 


150 


A/r LAST LOVE, 


rioTis idleness of the days and weeks which fol- 
lowed. Although at first I could scarcely endure to 
look upon the face of Nature, by reason of the me- 
mories she recalled, yet when she came to me as she 
did, after a time, beautiful as ever, dressed in her 
robes of richest gi-een, with fiowers in her hands, and 
buds in her hair, with the lo vely tints of spring on 
her face, and smiles playing on her lips, I yielded 
myself to the seductions of old, and lay on the green 
sward, blessing the bright May time, while the wan- 
dering breezes scented with hawthorn, and the deli- 
cate fragrance of the wild dog roses kissed my fore- 
head and caressed my cheeks. 

I got well there — slowly but surely I stole back 
to health, and then in the glad summer weather what 
walks J oan and the children and I had together ! 

There is not an inch of all that neighbourhood I 
could not traverse blindfold at this moment, unless 
indeed it might be the country near Colney Hatch 
and Wood Green where I am told a town has 
sprung up ; where, in place of blackberries, there are 
plantations of bricks and mortar, and instead of com- 
mon land little suburban houses with a patch of 
gaiden in front, protected from the tread of profane 
feet by iron railings, all of one pattern, and all 
painted one colour. 

But those winding lanes, those unexpected field 
paths, shall I ever forget their peaceful beauty ? I 
am old now, and the past may return to me no 
more; but yet as I write there comes back a not 
unpleasant memory— nothing more, alas! — of the 


AFTER HER MARRIAGE. 


15 1 

strength I possessed when we used to pace under 
the arching trees of a certain lane leading off to 
Berry Street, or when in a borrowed phaeton I was 
wont to drive Joan round by Chingford church, the 
old church I mean, and along to the Forest, by roads, 
the very thought of which touches something in my 
heart, the exact nature of which I shall never be able 
to define, unless in another world we are as capable 
of describing our feelings as we are of realizing 
them in this. 

It was during that long holiday also, that T first 
fully comprehended the treasure God had given us 
all in J oan. If the little cottage were a very bower 
of prettiness, it was to Joan it owed its beauty. 
Under her the younger fry worked with a will. It 
was very funny to hear J oan talk to them as though 
they had all emigrated to Australia, and were merely 
in a strange land, settlers to whom nothing they had 
to do ought to come amiss. Two of the boys were 
already in situations, and after their morals and 
comforts the old lady in Queen Anne Street was 
supposed to look with anxious attention for six days 
out of the seven ; but once the seventh day came, 
or rather the evening of the seventh, it might have 
made an old man young again to hear the voices of 
those boys as they went about the cottage and the 
farm, shouting to the smaller fry and whistling to 
the dogs, and halloing with all the mighty power of 
their strong lungs. 

I thought with Rose the whole happiness of my 
life had evaporated, leaving behind it nothing save 


152 


MV LAST LOVE, 


what was stale, flat, and unprofitable; but I know 
now that though my love was gone, my capability 
for enjoyment was left, and that although I had my 
moods and tenses of deep depression and profound 
melancholy, still I enjoyed that summer very 
fairly. 

For one thing I had not yet quite realized, what 
all the days of my life without Rose meant — for 
another, though I beheld her Walter Surry’s wife, I 
had not entirely grasped the fact that I could never 
again have either part or lot in her. There is 
nothing so difficult to believe as a certainty, till we 
have lived long enough to feel it is a certainty, and 
not a delusion. 

For example, who that has lost any loved object 
by means of death, ever, even in the first agony of 
grief, grasps just what it all means then, all it must 
mean in the future? Say a child has passed to the 
eternal shores, do you suppose father or mother 
quite understands the void that will be left? The 
tiny hands are still, the pattering feet quiet, the 
prattling tongue mute, the place it occupied empty, 
but the knowledge of all this comes happily by 
degrees, just as when a man’s wife dies, he scarcely 
at first comprehends how keenly he may Subse- 
quently feel her loss, say for instance in the matter 
of buttons. 

And in those days when I walked round Enfield 
Chase, and mooned about Winchmore Hill, when 1 
became acquainted with grassy lanes, where the 
convolvulus climbed and the brambles trailed, whx;^ 


AFTER HER MARRIAGE, 


153 


I crossed every ford, and knew every field path, 
thorough knowledge had not come to me of how 
desolate a thing life — even a successful life — might 
prove without Rose. 

Vaguely, I imagine, there had sprung up a hope 
in my heart, that if I worked hard and made a name. 
Rose might still be mine. As it is a simple impos- 
sibility ever to persuade a disinherited man that a 
dozen lives will not fall in, and the property ulti- 
mately revert to him, so I was wont to picture 
plague, pestilence, and famine let loose, in order that 
Walter Surry might be removed from the earth, 
and I get mine own again. 

He hunts, I thought, and men have often been 
killed by taking an awkward leap with an awkward 
horse ; he shoots, it may be he will meet his end in 
one of his own preserves : he has a yacht, it may go 
to the bottom : he drives fast and furiously, some 
day perchance his fiery steeds may carry him to his 
death. Ideas such as these floated through my 
mind, whilst it never occurred to me that death 
might develope a fancy for me, or fall in love to 
more purpose than I had done with Rose — ^my Rose 
no longer. 

It was not right, I knew, to picture Walter Surry 
dead, his wife a widow ; and yet I imagine thoughts 
of the possibilities I have hinted at, broke the force 
of my fall. I was not cast out of the seventh heaven 
of my foofis paradise, with never a straw to grasp 
at, and when I did reach the earth, paradise was so 
far away, and the realities of existence so urgently 


IX 


’54 


MY LAST LOVE. 


claiming attention, that I was fain to regard the 
story of “My First Love,” which has been already 
told, as a sort of fairy tale that could never have 
had any tangible connection with my prosaic life. 

She was gone. As one wakes in the morning, to 
tind the fairest dream vanish with the first touch of 
light, so I awoke by degrees to a comprehension 
that Rose and I were parted for ever — that she 
could no more be my love than the dream could 
be dreamt over again, or the vision beheld a second 
time. 

It seems to me only yesterday that I first saw her 
driving in the Park with her husband,— looking 
lovely, of course, and happy also, 

I drew back behind a tree, so that her eyes might 
not rest on me, and when their carriage had passed, 
I walked off in an opposite direction, feeling as 
though I had received a stab, and were bleeding in- 
ternally. 

But time went by, and I grew accustomed to that 
spectacle ; aye, even when I saw her fondling her 
boy — his son, I can honestly say my heart held a 
blessing for them both, though at the moment the 
waters of my life seemed bitter to me as those of 
Marah, 

But I anticipate, and this is a fault in story-telling, 
critics say — which is likely true, since it would be 
expecting too much to suppose they should ever 
read a tale with sufficient attention to discriminate 
between the actual present and the indicated future. 


CHAPTEH It 


I PROPOSE. 

S O I went back to my chambers, my law books. 

and after a time to my writing. For a while 
it pleased me to put thoughts on paper, to the end 
that Rose might read them; but soon — recollecting 
what a little goose she had always been, and how 
she required some one beside her to explain the 
meaning of the simplest ideas, to translate as it 
might be the hard words of a foreign tongue into 
commonplace English, to convert the guineas of 
great minds into the more familiar shillings and 
pence of ordinary exchange, — I gave up walking on 
stilts, well knowing Rose would only wonder what 
I could be doing up there, and finally began to 
write for that for which sooner or later all men and 
all women do write, — namely, money. 

I needed money both personally and for the sake 
of my family. What my father had saved out of 
the wreck of his fortunes was almost exhausted, and 
though it is a hard thing for a man to contemplate 


156 


MV LAST LOVE. 


supporting father and mother, brothers and sisters, 
still it was just then the work lying to my hand, 
and I took it accordingly. 

The taste which first leaves a parent chargeable 
to the parish, and then refuses to pay the parish 
for keeping him, has never seemed to me exactly 
good ; and although I am aware there are diversb 
ties of opinion on this point, and that I have been 
often called a fool for my pains even by the wife of 
my bosom, still I venture diffidently to state, that I 
do not think I am anything the poorer now because, 
to the best of my limited ability, I helped to keep a 
roof over the heads of my father and mother, and 
to enable the younger children to provide for them- 
selves. Some of the latter have done well and some 
ill, as must always be the case in large families. 
We have ne’er-do-wells amongst our girls* husbands, 
and wasters amongst our boys, but there is no grave 
— for we have our dead — which I need avoid 
passing by reason of remembered neglect or cold- 
ness. 

The worst trial we had amongst them all was 
Stephen, but he died with his head on Joan’s 
shoulder, and his hand clasping mine. I did my 
best for them all, and though sometimes I think 
that best might have been better, had I either not 
married at all or married differently— still I cannot 
be quite sure — and as I did marry my wife there 
can now be no earthly use in speculating upon the 
question. 

The way I came to marry her was, that it seemed 


/ PROPOSE. 


157 


to be expected of me. People may say this is no 
valid reason lor taking a wife — but thousands of 
men marry for no other. There is a great deal of 
talk about love at the present time — more than 
there used to be in the days when youths and 
maidens had better opportunities of seeing one 
another, and grew fonder accordingly — but looking 
round on my acquaintances and observing mens 
wives. 1 can come to no other conclusion than that 
partners for life are selected much after the fashion 
in which a house is taken. 

For some reason or other a wife is desired, and if 
a man cannot find just what he wants or what suits 
him, or that somebody else steps in and takes it 
over his head, he puts up with what he can get. 
And perhaps in time the wife being his own he 
comes to like her — or, perhaps, being his own he 
grows to dislike her — anyhow the choice has been 
made and the woman taken, and then there being 
no help for it, when we see a poor wretch trying 
vainly to make the best of a bad bargain, we insist 
with a bitter irony that he married for love. 

I did not at any rate — and yet society has always 
been good enough to suppose so — to think me such 
a fool in fact as to imagine had I married for love I 
should not have married something very different. 
There are peo])le who even now admire Mrs. Lut- 
trell — vastly — she is younger than I, and has 
worn considerably better. Some ten years ago her 
portrait appeared on the Academy walls, and she 
really looked handsomer then than I had ever 


MY LAST LOVE. 


158 

thought her before, which might certainly be owing 
to the artist’s kindness. That portrait now hangs 
on one side of our dining-room mantelpiece, and 
always seems looking round into the other room in 
search of another portrait, which shall never be 
painted, that of your humble servant ; and I will 
say it is a tolerably faithful likeness of a lady most 
men might be proud of calling wife. 

She is what is generally known as a “fine 
woman,” (I wonder men will use the phrase or 
women tolerate it) large, with a certain stateliness 
of carriage and em'pressement of manner. Girls, 
looking at her with a certain awe, think her never- 
theless delightful; but boys, amongst whom the 
bump of reverence is not so largely developed as is 
the case with their sisters, never seem to feel quite 
at ease in her presence. 

During the whole of our married life her pru- 
dence and discretion have been beyond all praise. 
Admired, she has yet not fiirted, and I have never 
lost five minutes of my natural rest owing to any 
jealous misgivings concerning her. Further, she has 
borne me sons and daughters — two of the former 
and three of the latter — and has ruled my house- 
hold, if not — well, shall we say economically — at 
least with a due regard to what the world expected 
from people in our position. Perhaps, indeed, with 
an over regard, but it would be ungenerous to carp 
at trifles, or to blame a lady for keeping up with 
the pace of the times in which lier lot has been 
easU 


/ PROPOSE, 


159 


With one exception also, we have never quar- 
relled. We have been admirably polite and dis- 
creetly fond ; all things therefore considered, as 
marriages go, 1 did not marry amiss, but it would 
be folly to say it was a love match. 

No. I considered Miss Sherlock a good, hand- 
some, young lady, who made herself immensely 
agreeable to me, and whose father, mother, brothers, 
sisters, uncles, aunts, friends, acquaintances, and 
self, thought I ought to propose for her. Which 
after much delay and consideration, and many 
doubts as to my own prudence, I did. 

We will pause here for a moment if you please, 
dear reader, and argue this matter a little out. We 
can do so with perfect impunity, since my wife is 
not aware I am the author of this true tale, and if 
she were she would not read it. Years ago, in- 
deed, she used to devour every line I wrote, but 
that was in^the days when she had an object to 
gain by such unwonted mental exercise, and having 
gained her object, she is little likely to retraverse 
the means used to compass it. 

I had doubts as to my prudence, if you remem- 
ber ; those doubts are now certainties. Better have 
waited — better have murmured no word of love till 
something like the old feeling stirred within me 
again. It may be — God knows I have never seen 
her — that somewhere on the world’s wide surface 
I might have met another Rose, whom I could have 
gathered and won. 

I have a fancy that a man’s first chance is not 


i6o 


MV LAST LOVE. 


necessarily his last, and this idea, though unwar- 
ranted by my own experience, has yet received 
considerable confirmation from the experience of 
others. 

Women tell me that they were first wooed 
because they recalled some long ago memory. Men 
say they chose because there was a tone, a look, a 
gesture, a smile which reminded them of the dream 
love departed. If I went wooing again — which 
Heaven forbid — I do not think I should mention to 
Grace the charm I find in her golden tresses is their 
resemblance to those which a quarter of a century 
ago constituted the chief beauty of Maud; yet such 
confidences are vouchsafed to the beloved objects, 
and as a rule during courtship they do not resent 
;t; the words uttered and the remarks made in the 
Hades of Matrimony, it is impossible to conjecture, 
for from that bourne no traveller »’eturns; the secrets 
of that Afterwards are never revealed save in the 
Divorce Court — and there but imperfectly. 

My impression, however, is, that if the man be 
wise he consigns Maud s memory to oblivion when 
he weds Grace — but of course I cannot tell. 

All I do know is, that even had Miss Sherlock 
resembled Rose I should have maintained a discreet 
silence on the subject. But she did not resemble 
her in the least. 

And this it seems to me now was just my mis- 
take. Given that I married at all, I should have 
married some one like Rose, whom I could have 
loved, first for the old love’s sake, and afterwards 


/ PROPOSE, 


i6i 

drawn closer and closer to my heart for her own. A 
man’s first love is his ideal love, and the real should 
always come as near the ideal as may be. 

Sometimes — mine has been a lonely life, mentally 
I mean most part of it — sometimes when I am 
walking along the streets, or sitting here in my 
chambers, or indulging — slippers on my feet and the 
“ Times ” ready to my hand — in that mild cigar 
against which Mrs. Luttrell inveighs as is the 
fashion of ladies after marriage, I wonder whether 
there be not in some remote district, or wasting her 
sweetness in the populous solitude of a London 
street, a second Rose whose life might have been all 
the happier had we met and married, whose fragrance 
would have been precious to me, whom I could have 
tended with loving care, who would have proved the 
blessing of my life to me, who could have supplied 
just that something my existence has always lacked, 
who would have seemed the dear house angel, for 
whose fluttering dress and soft clinging arms and 
gentle caresses my soul has longed in the house of 
her earthly bondage. 

And this feeling does not arise from any sort of 
conceit, or over- weening idea of my own capacity for 
making a woman happy. It is just that I think 
there must be some place — a heart now broken, 
possibly, that would have understood the workings 
of mine — a woman who might under different cir- 
cumstances have glided to my vacant hearth, and 
kindled there a fire which should not have been ex- 
tinguished till my pulses were stilled for ever* whilst 


i 62 


My LAST LOVE. 


I in my turn could have filled a void in her life, 
shielded her, sheltered her, kept her safe within my 
arms from sorrow and sin, from trouble and regret. 

She may have, or may not have had an existence, 
this second Rose, but it has never fallen to my lot 
to behold her ; thank God. 

Being married, I say this out of the depth of my 
gratitude, for had we met, there would then have 
begun one of those struggles from which let a man 
flee never so soon, never so far, he is sure to come 
forth worsted. As it is, I can truthfully declare I 
know no woman I like in the least degree better 
than my wife. Save once she never had any reason 
to complain of any one stepping between us and 
steah’ng away my affections, and on that occasion 
she mistook the position aS ladies unblessed by a 
real grievance are often apt to do. 

" I have been the best of husbands,” so Mrs. Sher- 
lock always kindly informs me, when her nature is 
softened and her heart opened by that Christmas- 
cheer — which fortunately for her digestion comes 
but once a year — “I cannot tell you how grateful 
I feel to God for having been so good to — ” 

Whereat I step back guiltily, feeling that from 
my point of view, I have not been a good husband, 
and that God, Whose blessing the old lady invokes 
as usual when we part after the festive meeting, 
which always takes place at Mr. Sherlock’s house on 
the 25th of December — knows it. 

They think I have done my best — done more, 
perhaps, than most — but conscience fails for a few 


1 PROPOSE, 


163 

hours to be quieted, nevertheless. I strive to think 
I have given my wife all she wanted, all she cared 
for, or could understand; but, knowing with what a 
capacity for domestic happiness Heaven gifted me, 
spite of the -cold, cheerless, unsatisfactory life I have 
led, I turn away from my own sophistry appalled 
at the bare idea of a flower which never longed for 
the sunbeams to fall on it ; of a human being who 
should be quite content to pass through the world 
without craving for the fulness of. bliss that can be 
contained only in one sentence — “I love — I am 
beloved.” 

It is quite in vain I tell myself she knows no 
better, for at all events I should have tried to teach 
her — I, whose wooing was of the calmest description, 
and who had won her consent long before I thought 
it worth my while to ask for it. 

How she, or any woman, could ever have been 
satisfied with such love-making by such a lover 
baffles my comprehension, but then Catherine Sher- 
lock had no knowledge of that sweet folly in which 
Rose and I indulged when we strolled through fields 
yellow wH,h buttercups, or stood idly by the rip- 
pling river. First a London nursery, then a school- 
room presided over by a strict governess, kept duly 
up to the mark by a still stricter mother ; then a 
finishing seminary, then London parties, London ac- 
quaintances, London amusements — the usual sort 
of life led by girls of her rank, and also of a much 
higher rank in London — that was her experience ; 
never a child — never a girl — she, I will be bound, 


MV LAST LOVE. 


164 

had always from her youth upwards behaved herself 
as a “ young lady ” should. 

She would have delighted the heart of Lady 
5urry, and yet I am much mistaken if when her own 
mother looked upon the work ot* her hands, she felt 
luite satisfied with it. Mrs. Sherlock’s work never 
satisfied me ; so, perhaps, I may be considered 
slightly prejudiced in the matter. 

Speaking from experience, I should say, there is 
no house which a man about to marry, or likely ever 
to be in a position to marry, should shun like tliat 
inhabited by Pater-familias blessed with a family 
of handsome grown and growing up daughters. 
With one daughter the net is spread in sight of the 
bird, but with several he is lured on with succes- 
sive crumbs, until lo ! a constraining hand is felt, 
and he understands the moment of his capture has 
arrived. 

For me I walked into the snare with my eyes 
wide open. I said to myself no woman should ever 
hear a word of love from me again, and feeling 
myself so utterly heart-whole, or rather utterly 
heart-wrecked, I gradually dropped into my old 
relations with the Sherlock family; dined with 
them on Sundays occasionally, dropped in fre- 
quently, “when passing,” in the evenings; escorted 
the “ girls” and their mamma to fiower-shows ; got 
boxes for the opera, and duly appeared there once 
more dancing attendance on the Sherlocks. I can- 
not, looking back upon the whole business, now 
imagine what possessed me to be so foolish. I cannot 


/ PROPOSE. 


165 


conceive why I went to the Sherlocks, unless, indeed, 
it might be that having all my life been accustomed 
to female society, I welcomed this sort of compa- 
nionship when a better was beyond my reach. 

There is something charming to a particular class 
of mind about the mere chatter of a lot of women ; 
something in the grace and refinement of calm home 
life irresistible to men of a certain nature. 

After my hard work — for I did work hard even 
in those days, though not with that persistent 
labour which success has since necessitated — the 
sight of the girls in their pretty muslin dresses ; the 
perfume of the flowers in the drawing-room, and the 
sound of their grand piano, on which Julia, the 
youngest, was no mean performer; the talk about 
trifles ; about the little odds and ends that make up 
the sum and substance of a fortunate woman’s life ; 
all those things, I say, were pleasant to me ; they 
were the vague reflex of a home I had left ; the dim 
realization of an ideal home I was never destined to 
possess ; and, as we love the sound of a familiar air, 
even though it be sung by an indifferent performer, 
so this similitude, unsatisfactory as it might be, of an 
imaginary Paradise, lured me on, lured me from my 
dull chambers to the abode of Mr. Sherlock, where, 
sooth to say, my welcome was ever of the most 
cordial description. 

As has been previously intimated, Mr. Sherlock 
formed a high estimate of my chances of success at 
a very early period of our acquaintance, and as- 
suredly it was not his fault that I failed to command 
fortune at an earlier period of this story 


i66 


MY LAST LOVE, 


A shrewd individual, and blessed with so man}? 
daughters that he could afford to bestow them with- 
out sorrow on likely husbands more easily than 
dower them with sufficient wealth to ensure their 
being able possessed of a good competence to roam 
through life in maiden meditation, fancy free, he 
looked on every man he met with a sort of double 
interest. 

The new comer might be a possible lover or a 
probable client. Supposing him unlikely to become 
the last, Mr. Sherlock was willing to take into con- 
sideration his means of sustaining the first character ; 
and, given that he could not be the first, Mr. Sher- 
lock had no objection to entertaining him well, in 
faith that after many days his bread should be found 
again. 

If a new acquaintance seemed able and willing to 
play both characters, then, of course, Mr. Sherlock 
opened his arms to him all the more readily ; but 
prizes of this description are not frequently landed 
on the matrimonial shore, and none of the Misses 
Sherlock married quite as in my opinion they ought 
to have done, considering the numerous “advan- 
tages,” social, educational, and moral, which they had 
enjoyed. 

In other words, calculating the amount of capita, 
sunk on them, I think the young ladies did not 
return a fair amount of interest ; but, after all, there 
is three per cent, certain, and an hundred per cent, 
risky; wherefore, perhaps, Mr. Sherlock’s daughters 
were just as safe on their comparatively limited in- 


1 PROPOSE. 


167 


comes as they might have been had they shot up 
matrimonially like rockets, only to the end that they 
might come down again like sticks. 

All this long digression is intended to explain how 
it happened that Mr. and Mrs. Sherlock took kindly 
to me, and made no sort of objection when in due 
time, Miss Sherlock took more kindly still. Neither 
were they, after the fashion of the parents men- 
tioned in Alan-a-Dale,‘ steel and stone when, after 
much exercise of spirit, I asked them to make me 
the happiest man in England. 

They never “ lifted the latch, and bade me begone.” 
They only said they gave dear Catherine to me in 
the fullest confidence. I have often wished since 
their faith had been less, or my good qualities nc* 
so apparent. 

Not unwarned, either, did I walk into the noose 
matrimonial ; on the contrary, my mother frequently 
trusted that I would not marry or engage myself 
precipitately. She did not approve of early mar- 
riages unless suitable in every respect; she thought 
a rising man should wait until he attained a certain 
position before choosing, and so forth ; while Joan 
openly hoped I never would make that odious Miss 
Sherlock her sister-in-law. 

As for the old lady in Queen Anne Street, she 
rather encouraged the idea. Now her money was 
gone, she felt thankful for such slight attentions as 
the Sherlocks considerately shewed her; further, 
other acquaintances having cooled and dropped off, 
she delighted in the Sherlocks’ visits, which broke 


i68 


MY LAS7 LOVE, 


the monotony of her life, and brought to her very 
arm-chair news and gossip which she could by no 
other manner of means have contrived to hear. 

“ It will be a very good match for you indeed,” 
Mrs. Graham was wont to remark, and when I re- 
plied — 

"I have no intention of marrying at all,” she 
shook her head gravely, and said “ she trusted I did 
not mean to wear the willow all my life for the sake 
of a girl who evidently had not cared two-pence 
about me.” Further, she expressed her belief that 
if I did not marry Miss Sherlock, I ought to mairy 
her ; and that if I had not proposed for her, or did 
not propose soon, those consequences which were 
sure to ensue would be fully deserved by me. 

To what consequences Mrs. Graham referred I 
have not to this moment an idea; but still, these 
vague hints of something fearful looming in the 
future filled me with a terrible alarm — all the 
greater, perhaps, by reason of its very vagueness. 

Fact is, I had long been drifting down that river 
which falls into the matrimonial sea — drifting too, 
without excuse, merely because I was too cowardly 
and too irresolute to take oar and pull back against 
the stream. 

When I thought of Mrs. Sherlock’s black looks, 
and the “ explanation ” on which Mr. Sherlock would 
naturally insist — when I considered the time Miss 
Sherlock had wasted upon my imworthy self, and 
reflected about the strictures of her friends, who 
would be sure to say, and justly, that I had used 
her shamefully — retreat seemed impossible. 


I PROPOSE. 


I«9 

I was not afraid of a " breach of promise.” Even 
had such cases been as common then as they are 
now, Mr. Sherlock was much too wise a man and 
considerate a father to risk damaging his daughter’s 
future by any proceedings of that nature ; but I 
was afraid I had so far committed myself, that 
nothing remained save for me to proceed further, 
and commit myself yet more. 

That the Sherlocks expected me to propose, was 
patent to the meanest comprehension. Often her 
sisters — evidently instructed so to do — left us alone 
together, and there are no more fearful memories in 
my life than that of those half- hours when Catherine 
and I talked on indifferent subjects — she momen- 
tarily anticipating the coming of my request, and I 
knowing she was waiting for it. 

Those sisters — once more, young man, strong in 
your youth and your vanity, avoid a house where 
there are daughters — were as so many nails in my 
coffin. Whenever one seemed loose, they struck it 
on the head, and drove it home. Without their 
help, Catherine Sherlock had never become my wife 
— with it, I am her most devoted husband. 

At last I did it ; I felt happier after, for the deed 
was accomplished— the matter off my mind. And 
the time and the manner was as follows : — 

Finding their house in Upper Malcolm Street too 
small ostensibly for their family— but, really, too 
small for the enlarging views of that family — Mr. 
Sherlock took a house in Huntingdon Square. Per- 
haps, reader, you may chance to know it, but, for 


170 


MY LAST LOVE, 


the benefit of those who do not, I will state that it 
lies in what is now the North Western District of 
London — very West of North indeed ; that it is 
out of the way of every place ; that even at this 
present hour it is fairly fashionable, and altogether, 
and in all respects, it was eminently unsuitable for 
a professional man blessed with a very certain number 
of girls, whose fortunes were entirely dependent on 
his exertions. 

However, Mr. Sherlock took the house, and Mrs. 
Sherlock gave a large party in honour of their 
entering into possession, to which I was duly 
bidden. 

Never had Catherine looked to such advanta^-e. 
Amongst a number of pretty girls, she was the pret- 
tiest — decidedly the helle, of the room. So I heard 
people observing as we whirled round to the music 
of one of Schubert’s waltzes. 

“ What a handsome couple !” “ Engaged,” “ When 
is it to be ?” These sentences were spoken in loud 
whispers, and, after I had led Miss Sherlock to a 
seat, one gentleman, an old attorney, whose good- 
will I was anxious to conciliate, seized me by the 
hand, and asked if he might congTatulate me ? 

“ Not yet,” I answered ; “ but I hope some day.” 
And then I determined to make the plunge that 
night, and, as every one expected me to propose, 
fulfil these natural anticipations. 

But for the ball dress, and the lights, and the 
music, and the dancing, and the - champagne — I do 
not think I could have done it after all ; but she 


I PROPOSE, 


171 

looked so soft and graceful, and feminine, in her 
skirts, and puffings, and ribbons, and flowers, that 
for the time the other figure, which rarely left me, 
vanished away, and I saw nothing but a beautiful 
woman, who loved me as much as she could love 
anything, and who, in answer to my whispered 
“ Catherine,” blushed crimson, but never withdrew 
her hand. 

We were standing at the moment in a conser- 
vatory, the plants in which formed a sort of screen 
between us and the ballroom. 

I can see it all now — Catherine, for the first time, 
timid, and a little shrinking— the dancers going as 
fast as their legs could carry them, whilst the band 
played “ The Spirit of the Ball.” I see the aloes 
and the orange-trees, through the branches of which 
there peeps for a moment the half-angry face of a 
girl, between whom and myself there have been 
certain small flirtations on occasions like the present. 

I loosen Catherine’s hand, and lay mine on my heart 
to induce the girl to think I had been only playing 
at love-making ; then the face vanishes, and I draw 
near again, and say, “We were watched, Catherine 
— I may call you so, may I not?” 

She says nothing, for this is not a proposal, and 
the young lady has been well trained, so I proceed 
to extremities, and ask if some day she will let me 
call her “ wife ?” which being definite enough in 
all conscience, she murmurs “ yes,” and “ papa.” 

And thus I became engaged, for it is needless to 
remark that “ papa,” whose consent I asked before 


172 


MY LAST LOVE, 


leaving the house, was more than willing, while 
mamma and the girls — not including Catherine — 
kissed me at parting ; but the next day I went into 
the park, and stood in a retired place till I saw 
Walter Surry’s carriage pass. 

Then I said to myself, " Good-bye, dear love — 
good-bye, bright dream,” and turned me to the new 
life, into which I swore no thought of Rose Surry 
should enter. 


CHAPTER m. 


THE “HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE.* 


E were not married so soon as I. could have 



wished, for Mr. Sherlock thought I had 
better get a little “ before the world ere taking 
unto myself a wife, and it is only a just testimony 
to the admirable prudence and wisdom of my fiancee, 
to add that she thought so too. 

Now, being “before the world” meant, in Mr. 
Sherlock’s dictionary, a certain sum of money so 
invested as to be easily got at if need arose, say at 
profitable interest in the three per cents. ; a policy 
of assurance, and a well-furnished house, freehold 
if possible, if not leasehold at a nominal rent ; but 
in consideration of the fact that I had still my way 
to push, and had every prospect of pushing it to 
some purpose, he consented to waive the three per 
cents, and freehold business, and only stipulated that 
I should insure my life in some sound office, ap- 
proved by him, and provide a comfortable home for 
Catherine before I married her. 


m 


MV LAST LOVE. 


When a man chances to be the overworked father 
of many daughters, it is natural that he should 
dread anyone of them coming home empty-handed 
in the event of widowhood ; and had Catherine been 
called upon in the early days of our married life to 
weep beside my deatii-bed, as I doubt not she would 
have done most decorously, I can fancy comfort 
mingling with her grief at thought of that three 
thousand pounds, on which the poor dear fellow had 
only paid one premium. 

Whether before the day of his marriage, it is 
exactly pleasant that a man shall be compelled to 
contemplate as an imminent possibilit}^ the day of 
his death, is a question on which I do not now pro- 
pose to enter. For my own part, I have always 
believed that fathers-in-law elect receive a commis- 
sion from the insurance companies, and that in this 
way, inverting Shakespeare, the prospective funeral 
meats furnish forth the present bridal feast ; but then 
as my wife says, I am peculiar, which may well be, 
though Heaven knows I do not think I am one half 
so peculiar as the men and the women amongst 
whom my lot is cast. 

Further, she says I was always peculiar, which 
also may well be, seeing I insured my life in the in- 
terests of — furnished a house to please the tastes of 
— and finally married a woman for whom I can 
honestly declare I cared no more, or rather less, than 
I do for the lady who may read this paragraph, 
since the latter does me the honour to scan what I 
have written, while my wife decidedly prefers the 


THE « HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFEP 175 

works of those popular authors whom she knows 
onl}’ by repute. 

No man, somebody says, is a hero to his valet de 
Cfiamihre. I am sure no writer is to his home circle, 
save by virtue of the pounds, shillings and pence his 
writings produce. 

“ How much are you to have for that, dear ?” says 
Fond Affection, sitting by the hearth; and when 
you inform her, she replies, evidently liking the 
sum, but considering it beyond your deserts, — 

“ I wish I could write implying thereby that if 
she merely possessed your foolish knack of author- 
ship she could produce something worth buying. 

“ I wish you could,” says the unfortunate hack 
in answer, thinking at the same time if she were 
able to indite anything besides an ungrammatical 
letter, she would understand what weary work it all 
is, what tiring, unsatisfactory, never-ending, always 
beginning work it seems, once the glamour is re- 
moved, and the illusory mist of distance dispelled, 
and a man comes to understand the exact meaning 
of the word author, as learnt from long and close 
personal experience with it. 

But I wander away from the Life Polic}’-, which — 
after making various statements about my father 
and mother, and brothers and sisters, and being 
kneaded and pounded ail over by a terrible man 
with knuckles like the pebbles wherewith David 
slew Goliath, who wormed the secret of my engage- 
ment out of me, and then grew maddeningly face- 
tious over, it — was duly effected. 


176 


MY LAST LOVE. 


For over twenty years I have paid that premium, 
and grumbled over doing so. 

“ But then you might have died,” says the secre- 
tary, with whom I have the honour of being ac- 
quainted. 

“ But I haven’t,” I suggest 

“ Are you sorry ?” he asks. 

"Well, upon the whole, ‘yes.* I think I should 
like to have had my innings out of something, even 
an insurance office.” 

" Ah ! Mr. Luttrell, just the same as ever,** he 
remarks. 

" Just the same,” I agree, and walk out of the 
office, muttering to myself, however, " Just the same 
Luttrell circumstances made me, but not the Luttrell 
I should have been, taking Rose to wife without any 
of these accursed preliminaries.” 

That is the difference, you perceive, between 
marrying one’s first love, and forming a matrimonial 
alliance with one’s second. 

The first is apple blossom and moonshine — mur- 
muring streams and the sweetest ballad in the world, 
as it seemed then, as it seems still to memory. The 
second is a carpet warehouse — wholesale if possible 
— one of Collard’s pianos, procured through a pro- 
fessional friend at ostensibly trade prices ; a house 
Lord So-and-So would have taken had there only 
been sufficient accommodation for his domestics, 
and the means of giving one party at least every 
season so thronged, that numbers were unable to 
ascend the staircase. All this Catherine has com- 


THE « HAPPIEST DA Y OF MY LIFE!* 177 


passed, and I can only hope she is satisfied with it. 
I am not quite ; but then, as the treasure of my 
heart remarks, she does not know what would 
satisfy me. 

Nor do I — though, perhaps, looking back I have 
a fancy what might have once — ^but then, who can 
teU ? 

Better, possibly, for me and my darling that we 
separated while the dew still trembled on th^ 
flowers. I might not have made her so happy as I 
would. And sometimes, sitting here alone, I think 
that if the sorrow I can remember stamped upon 
her face, the tears I have seen her shed, had been 
caused by any act of mine, I could not bear the 
curse of life, but just end it with as little unneces- 
sary pain to my family and myself as might be. 

But I was to forget Bose, or at least to cease 
dreaming about, and speaking of her ; both of which 
feats I might have performed now easily, had Mr. 
Sherlock permitted me to marry earlier and with 
less fuss concerning ways and means. As it chanced, 
the contrast between the things Catherine considered 
essentials, and the modest contentment of Sir Hum- 
phre}’’ Surry’s daughter, kept the old sore open. I 
felt, by reason of the amount of outfit required, 
that I was about taking a journey into a very 
strange and inhospitable land, the ways of which 
were not my ways, the inhabitants of which believed 
not in such matters as love and pure simplicity, but 
worshipped rather society and Mrs. Grundy, and 
were incredulous concerning happiness that rented a 


178 


MV LAST LOVE. 


house at a lower sum than the social trade union 
had fixed on as the smallest a gentleman might 
pay. 

Nevertheless, I never swerved in my fidelity to 
Miss Sherlock. Never once did a thought of selling 
off my poor worldly efiects, paying my few debts, 
taking my passage to America, and placing the 
Atlantic between me and my charmer, cross my 
mind. 

I meant to marry, and to push my way up, for 
the sake of myself and my family. I had not then 
drunk my drop of the cup of worldly prosperity, 
and the draught seemed desirable. Unable to com- 
pass love and fame, I resolved at least to grasp the 
latter. 

Those who had a right to be most interested in my 
future happiness were satisfied with my choice. 

“ It was a good thing on the whole,” my mother 
said at last ; while my father remarked — 

“ Perhaps it was as well, Tom, Rosie did marry her 
cousin. She would never have made a wife for a 
poor man.” 

" It is the most sensible piece of work you ever 
did,” declared Mrs. Graham, " and I am proud of 
you, Tom Luttrell.” Whilst nothing could exceed 
the affectionate demonstrations of Mrs. Sherlock and 
the girls, or the kiiid interest Mr. Sherlock took in 
me and my affairs. 

Only Joan did not like it. 

" You are certain, Tom, you have not been in too 
great a hurry,” she asked, as we walked together up 


THE « HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE” 1 79 

and down the little plot of garden ground which 
the Southgate Cottage boasted. 

Then I replied, a little sharply — 

“ J oan, I have asked Miss Sherlock to he my 
wife, and that is the same as if she were already my 
wife; so you must never say anything like that 
again. Do you understand ?” 

Whereupon Joan sighed, and answered softly — 

“Yes, I think I understand better even than 
you.” 

“ I want to be settled,” I said, reading her thought 
and resenting it. “ I shall be glad when Mr. Sher- 
lock gives his consent to my immediate marriage.” 

But Joan did not answer this time. She only 
remained aggravatingly silent, offering up, I imagine, 
a solemn petition that Mr. Sherlock might never 
give his consent, and that I might never marry Miss 
Sherlock. 

But the petition was not granted. In due time I 
had saved enough to furnish a house, which Mrs. 
Sherlock approved, from garret to cellar, even in 
matters which it then seemed to my bachelor igno- 
rance premature to consider ; but she was wise in 
her generation, and I am bound to say her foresight 
in the matter of our accommodation was justified by 
results. 

I had found a house then, built, so it seemed, to 
meet every exigency of our possible future. Cathe- 
rine selected the furniture — I should advise any man 
about to marry to insist on the young lady doing so 
as she cannot in that case well find fault with it 


i8o 


MY LAST LOVE. 


afterwards — and I think she and her mamma bought 
everything, down to a dozen skewers, which could 
be needed in an establishment. The life insurance, 
as hath beeu already stated, was duly effected. I had 
held some good briefs, and there appeared every 
prospect of more following ; in fact, I was at length, 
even from Mr. Sherlock’s amended point of view, in 
a position to marry, and accordingly the day was 
fixed, and Catherine’s wedding-dress made. 

It was of white satin, and did not become her. 
It requires a peculiar woman to stand white satin. 
Even Rose would have found it a trial, but then I 
should have chosen her dress, or influenced it no 
doubt, whilst Miss Sherlock, influenced solely by 
herself, selected hers without the slightest reference 
to anybody. 

Perhaps, as a professional advertisement — perhaps, 
because he was overjoyed to remember that a man 
had at length been found to marry one of his daugh- 
ters — perhaps, because, having that three thousand 
pounds always in his memory, he knew it was about 
the last thing he would ever be called on to do for 
her, Mr. Sherlock resolved that the nuptials of my 
Catherine should be on a scale of magnificence un- 
dreamed of hitherto in Huntingdon Square. 

To describe the preparations which were made in 
Mr. Sherlock’s house, at Mr. Sherlock’s expense, in 
anticipation of the wedding, would be utterly be- 
yond my ability. The whole of the inhabitants of 
the Square were indeed kept on the qui mve for 
some weeks previous to the ceremony. Now it was 


THE HAPPIEST DA Y OF MY LIFE” i8i 

the florist come in a light van to take his orders, now 
the confectioner, now the individual who was to find 
rout seats for the evening ball, further, large band- 
boxes, and young women of the millinery persuasion 
being followers of fashion and latest bonnet novelty, 
prevailed in the hall, whilst in the drawing-room I 
heard of nothing save tulle and tarletan, silks and 
laces. 

My adored one was accompanied to the altar by 
twelve bridesmaids, six of whom were arrayed in 
pink and white, and six in blue and white, a device 
of Maud’s, who thereby secured to herself by some 
means the privilege — not hard to wrest — of paying 
for the attire of herself and sisters. Since those 
days, I have some reason to believe their flowing 
robes were paid for also by Mr. Sherlock ; but as 
Mrs. Sherlock never found the matrimonial purse- 
strings too much relaxed for her benefit, we may 
forgive her this slight deception, which did not do 
much harm to Maud, or to Mr. Sherlock, seeing 
neither was acquainted with it, but which did fur- 
nish forth a new dress or two for the next aspirant 
to matrimonial honours. 

How Maud ever managed to pay for those dresses 
puzzles me to this hour. She did not come to me 
for a cheque, and further, she and my father and 
mother, and the younger fry, severally presented Miss 
Sherlock with appropriate if not expensive gifts, 
which were duly laid out, with other tokens of affec- 
tion, on the drawingroom table, and elicited a con 
siderable amount of admiration. 


i 82 


MY LAST LOVE. 


It was like a dream to me — more like a dream 
than any experience of my life, when I stood before 
the altar-rails vowing to take Catherine — to have 
and to hold her. People, I understand did not con- 
sider my self-possession perfect on the memorable 
occasion ; but then, men are not usually so calm in 
the presence of danger as the softer sex, and what- 
ever may have been my shortcomings in the matter 
of confidence they were amply redeemed by the ad- 
mirable bearing of the bride. Then, as since, on the 
occasions of christenings, dinner-parties, death-beds, 
and so forth, Catherine behaved herself to per- 
fection. 

Her voice was neither too loud nor too low ; and 
when, the ceremony over, we repaired to the vestry, 
the manner in which she kissed her mother and 
friends without disarrangins: the folds of her veil, or 
tlie lace on her dress, was worthy of all commen- 
dation. 

For the last time she signed in a neat ladylike 
hand her name, Catherine Sherlock ; and then, a 
little impatient perhaps of the kissing and con- 
gratulations, I asserted my newly-acquired rights, 
and drawing her hand within my arms, walked off 
with my wife to the caiTiage that awaited our ap 
pearance. 

The other carriages rapidly followed, and after an 
interval employed by the ladies in admiring the pre- 
sents, and by the men, as I have cause to believe, in 
“ doing sherry and seltzer,” we all went solemnly and 
slowly downstairs to breakfast. ' 


THE “ HAPPIEST DA Y OF MY LIFE” 183 

I wish I had sufficient ability to reproduce before 
the reader’s imagination that wedding-breakfast as 
it is photographed on my memory ; for the absurdity 
of the whole affair impressed me vastly, though 
Heaven knows I never felt in a less lauorhinor hu- 
mour than when it became necessary for me to re 
turn thanks for the beautiful, graceful, and accom- 
plished bride and myself. 

True I went to the altar a willing sacrifice, but 
still it did not seem to me exactly a fitting occasion 
for merry-making. I might have felt differently 
had Rose been my bride, but then Rose was not my 
bride, which made all the difference. The match 
could not be regarded other than remarkably suita- 
ble in every respect save one, and I knew this. 
Nevertheless, though the grand mansion in Ty- 
burnia, furnished throughout by the best London 
upholsterers, and decorated with that pure taste for 
which Englishmen are so remarkable, may be, in the 
world’s opinion and your own, a most desirable resi- 
dence, it cannot quite come up to the beauty of the 
air palace you built, lying under the beech trees 
that summer afternoon long ago. 

And this was just my case. I felt Miss Sherlock 
was my reality, and Rose my illusion ; but while ac- 
knowledging the great blessing Providence had given 
me, I did not feel inclined to sing a psalm of thanks- 
giving over the razing of my dream castle to the 
ground. 

Nevertheless, as I have said, the absurdity of the 
whole aftair struck me forcibly, as anything ridicu- 


i84 


MV LAST LOVE. 


lous always does strike one most forcibly at the most 
solemn seasons. That so many people should have 
been invited to witness our launch filled my soul, 
when I beheld them seated round Mr. Sherlock’s 
table, with surprise not unmingled with awe. 1 
could not tell what the day seemed like. It was 
not like a Sunday, nor yet a week-day ; it had not 
the ghastly cheerfulness of Christmas, nor the bright- 
ness of Easter. Rather, it appeared to me a cross 
between Good Friday and going to a morning per- 
formance at Drury Lane. I had a sense of being 
out for the occasion unlawfully, and I kept wonder- 
ing what all those people would do after we left 
them ; how they would occupy the time till they re- 
turned to the grand ball wherewith Mr. and Mrs. 
Sherlock meant to celebrate the event ofi a new 
member being added to the family circle. 

There were men and women present who had long 
outlived the illusions of youth, if their youth ever 
held any ; there were husbands who had made their 
wives’ hearts ache, and wives who, after twenty years 
of matrimony, still lacked information on that useful 
branch of knowledge — how to make home happy ; 
and yet these people, utterly ignorant as to whether 
our venture might not turn out as badly as their 
own, sat at that marriage feast, and smiled and ate, 
as though there were no such things as unhappiness 
and indigestion on earth. 

They were “ drest in all their best,” in order to 
see me take my Sally abroad, and I should think 
much money must have changed hands in order to 


THE “ HAPPIEST DA Y OF MY LIFEP 185 

effect such gorgeous results ; so that in our small 
way we benefited trade, and I feel no doubt but the 
confectioner who provided the breakfast and the 
hired waiters, who ministered to the wants of ex- 
hausted humanity, rose up and called me blessed for 
having married Miss Sherlock. 

Amongst the guests were two authors, one of 
whom, with that reverence for the sanctity of pri- 
vate life that distinguishes some votaries of litera- 
ture, reproduced the scene in one of his clever 
novels, only changing our names, our rank, and the 
place of our abode. In his hand Mr. Sherlock be- 
came Sir Joseph Shy lock, who, having made his 
money by discounting bills at two hundred per cent., 
stood for some borough far distant from the scene of 
his early struggles, was duly returned, made himself 
necessary to the then government, and earned for 
his reward the honours of knighthood. 

Too great a man ostensibly to continue the bill- 
discounting business, he nevertheless, mh rosa, lent 
money to those younger and elder sons, who had 
either money in expectation, or friends in the back- 
ground. 

Sir J oseph never appeared in any of these trans- 
actions himself, but employed as jackal a man in 
his confidence, in comparison to whom the knight 
was honesty and simplicity itself. 

This man, young in years but old in wickedness, 
named Cottrell, in consideration of the hold he pos- 
sessed over Sir Joseph, was promised one of the 
daughters in marriage — a beautiful creature, secretly 


MV LAST LOVE, 


1 86 

enamoured of a marvellously clever poet. How the 
story proceeded space will not permit me to relate 
in detail, only the end of it all was, that Shyjock 
and Cottrell came to grief owing to a little accident 
in connection with the signature of a noble Marquis, 
and that the clever poet who possessed a knowledge 
of business and law — vague possibly, but yet re- 
markable withal in one of so dreamy and romantic 
a nature — put such a pressure upon lover and father, 
that the hand of the beauteous Rachel was bestowed 
upon him, together with an infinite number of fat 
money-bags. 

I have read that novel quite through, not with- 
out interest. 

“ Jenkins always draws his characters from the 
life,” say the critics, " and therein lies the principal 
charm of his rare genius.” Having sat uncon- 
sciously for one of his characters, I can only add 1 
hope his people are not considered like life. 

As for his rare genius — well, perhaps I had better 
pass that on without asking you, reader, to swallow 
as much of it as Mr. Sherlock’s guests did of cham- 
pagne. 

For me I did not drink deep, and yet when I 
rose to return thanks for Catherine and myself, the 
room seemed to be spinning round and the people 
with it. Accustomed I was to public speaking, but 
this private speaking across the skeletons of fowls, 
and the debris of salad, over cut-glass and the best 
electro-plate, tried my equanimity. 

How I got through that speech I do not know. 


THE “ HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE» 187 


I held on to the table with both hands, so that if it 
went awry I might go also. I told a great many 
untruths. I uttered a vast number of truisms. 
There were cheers, there was laughter ; people said, 
" Capital,” and it may have been capital for aught 
I know ; all I can now remember is that I wound 
up by declaring it was the happiest day of my life, 
at which statement Mrs. Sherlock looked at me with 
an expression of approbation, and wiped away a 
tear. 

Then even more toasts and more champagne was 
drunk. After a time the table became quite steady, 
and I was able ultimately to face the fact that Ca- 
therine had slipped away to change her dress, and 
that the moment when we two were together to 
start in reality on our travels through the world, was 
at hand. 

The trunks were already beside the coachman; 
the young ladies were already in the balcony armed 
with white slippers; already a crowd had formed 
itself on each side of the hall-door, to witness the 
bride’s exit from her father’s home ; and I stood 
waiting for her appearance. 

I could not tell you, reader, how my heart sank 
at the sound of the rustle of her dress. If I never 
knew it before, I knew then the whole affair was a 
mistake — a lamentable mistake for one of us, if not 
for both ; and I screwed up my courage to go out 
with her for life, as many a man has done to go out 
in the chill winter’s morning with Mr. Calcraft and 
the chaplain. 


i88 


MV LAST LOVE. 


God forgive me, I felt at that moment like one 
who lias committed some great and irretrievable 
sin. 

I went forward to meet her. They thought I was 
eager, whereas I was only desperate. There was 
some kissing — much kissing indeed. Catherine 
wept on the ample maternal bosom, and took the 
starch out of her hither’s elaborate shirt frill. 

I liked her better then than I had ever done. 
After all, it required some confidence for a girl to 
put her whole future in a man’s hand, and I vowed 
to myself I would try and be good to her. 

It was a break, and she felt it. She was leaving 
the old familiar life and the tried friends and the 
loving parents. 

“ Good-bye, Luttrell, and be sure to write.” That 
was my father-in-law. 

“ Good-bye, Thomas. I am quite happy about my 
child.” That was Mrs. Sherlock, with the tears 
trickling down her antiquated cheeks. And “ good- 
bye, and good-bye, and good-bye,” echoed round, 
whilst between a line composed of the very rank 
and file of London life, I led my weeping bride from 
the house where she had pursued her maiden medi- 
tations on the all-absorbing maiden theme — “ How 
to get married, and to whom.” 

Swish came down a shower of white slippers, and 
a chorus of young voices called out, “Good-bye,” and 
“God speed.” The coachn\an touched his horses, 
and we were ofi‘ on the journey of life together. 

“Compartment? — Yes, sir, — quite right, sir, — lug- 


THE « HAPPIEST DA Y OF MY LIFEP 189 

gage, — I will see to that, sir.” Thus spoke the 
guard, locking us up safely together in a carriage, 
from which there was no escape. 

“ How could he know T I asked Catherine ; " and 
what are the porters grinning at T 

“ One of the slippers lodged on the top of my im- 
perial. Did you not see it ? I did.” And Cathe- 
rine proceeded, quite systematically, to see that her 
belongings were all safe, and that nothing had been 
left behind. 

“My shepherd’s-plaid shawl!” she exclaimed, 
“ they have forgotten to put that up.” And then, I 
confess, the whole affair began to assume a common- 
place aspect. 

We were off ; and I sat thinking. Shall I make a 
full and free confession to this woman, whom I have 
sworn to love till the day of my death ? Shall I 
establish a link between us — tell her, with God’s 
help I mean to try and love her more than I ever 
love that other ? Shall I venture on the dangerous 
ground of being frank with a wife and that on our 
wedding-day ? 

“ I do hope,” Catherine broke in at this juncture, 
while the express tore along, “ I do hope they have 
not forgotten anything else. It will be so inconv^ 
nient not having that shawl.” 

“ We can buy another one,” I answered, taking 
her hand; but she had dispelled all thought of a 
confession, which has never since been made till 
now. 

And it was quite as well. I undciistaud perfectly 


190 


MY LAST LOVE, 


my Catherine could neither have comprehended its 
import, nor borne its repetition. 

We learn many things as we grow old, and 
amongst them the value and virtue of reticence even 
towards the wife of our bosom concerning the things 
which lie next our heart. 


CHAPTER IV. 


MARRIAGE. 

S OME people say that those blissful days which 
it is usual to spend as far from home and a 
man’s ordinary occupation as possible, are the most 
trying of married life, and this may well be so, 
seeing that it is a serious experiment to make, that 
of passing an entire month alone with anybody — 
more especially the new wife of one’s bosom — but I 
did not find my honeymoon wearisome ; on the con- 
trary, I think it enabled me to get more gradu- 
ally accustomed to the singular fact of being married 
and independent no longer, than would have been 
possible had I stepped with Mrs. Luttrell at once 
into the house already referred to, whereof my Ca 
therine had selected the furniture. 

It is a great change to any man to get married, 
and one requires some little time to become quite 
reconciled to great changes, whether they be de- 
sirable or the reverse. Therefore, as the thirty days 
we spent on the continent were a sort of ante-room 


192 


MY LAST LOVE, 


where I was permitted to loiter before entering into 
the full state of domestic felicity which awaited me 
in England, I shall ever retain a grateful recollection 
of the opportunity thus afforded of coming gradually 
to a knowledge of the happiness I might reclcon 
upon in the life I had — voluntarily, shall I say ? — 
chosen. 

During the honeymoon Catherine proved herself 
to be just what she has continued ever since — a 
woman admirably adapted to sustain and even ad- 
vance her husband’s social position — a woman who 
liked to go and see places, to the end that she might 
talk about them afterwards, but who took no interest 
in anything, whether in art or nature, for pure love 
of art or love of nature. In itself I am quite confi- 
dent she considered moonlight then what she con- 
siders moonlight now — an infinitely poorer invention 
tliaii gas-light ; that in her heart she greatly pre- 
ferred the Parisian shops to any cathedral or picture- 
gallery we visited ; that she liked much better going 
to the theatre than contemplating the beauties of the 
Rhine ; and that the new bonnet she took back with 
her to England, afforded her much more unqualified 
pleasure than the memory of any landscape on which 
her eyes had rested. 

And was I disappointed ? On the contrary. Here 
was a wife just fitted for me ; one whose sensibilities 
required no delicate handling, no anxious considera- 
tion, who although she loved me as much as she 
knew how, was not likely to prove exacting and ask 
for or even to understand that passionate, all-absorb- 


MARRIAGE, 


193 


ing love which having poured out upon one woman 
I believed I could never give to another. 

The love Rose awoke would only have amazed 
and wearied Catherine. Whilst a man was being 
brought skilfully on to proposing point, and from 
that point up to the culminating point of matri- 
mony, it might be well enough to humour his senti- 
mental fancy for quiet walks and talks ; but that a 
man and wife should care to be alone, that they 
should live out of society, and affect the company of 
one another to the exclusion of desirable acquaint- 
ances, were ideas utterly foreign to the admirably 
regulated mind of Catherine Luttrell, n6e Sherlock, 
and as sooth to say I was not now particularly de- 
sirous of spending a tete-a-tete existence, we suited 
each other capitally. She wrote home that Thomas 
was the best and most generous husband in the 
world ; to which Mrs. Sherlock replied, that she had 
always felt I would make her treasure happy. Have 
I done so ? 

There is one black memory that I recall while 
tracing these lines, one act of my life I would give 
everything I ever possessed or am ever likely to 
possess to be able to undo. We never talk about it, 
not even Joan and I, but it has left a dark track 
across my heart, and whatever it might have proved 
to Catherine, it has been to me the bitterest and most 
unsoothed trouble of a not particularly untroubled 
existence. 

Had I spoken to her out of the fulness of my 
heart on our wedding-day, as I once purposed, would 


194 


MV LAST LOVE. 


that sorrow lie heavy on my conscience now ? Per- 
’.laps not, but the forgotten shawl stopped my in- 
ended confession, and thinking of that shawl I 
;ometimes imagine that not merely the penitence 
but also the grief is mine alone; that I did not 
wound her so vitally as I feared, and that I have 
fretted myself needlessly over a matter which pos- 
Ibly never first nor last cost her a night’s sleep. 

But this comes later in my story. We could 
foresee no storm or sign of a storm at the point I 
have now reached — our return to England. Rather 
everything there betokened and rightly a long con- 
tinuance of fair weather. Catherine liked her house, 
and, being the mistress of it, she liked welcoming 
her mother and sisters in her drawing-room, and 
she welcomed them frequently without remonstrance 
or hindrance from me ; she liked having plenty of 
money, and I gave her all I could spare and worked 
hard to get more for her; she liked being married to 
a man whose relations did not trouble her much and 
yet remained on perfectly friendly terms. If bitter- 
ness mingled with her cup it was because a portion 
of my income went to maintain the modest establish- 
ment at Southgate. It was folly for me ever to have 
told her anything concerning that, but people enter- 
tain some ridiculous ideas about our being quite 
frank before marriage, which is the more extraordi- 
nary since nobody is frank after, and not having had 
the benefit of any previous connubial experience I 
made the usual mistake and consequently have since, 
on various occasions, repented my communications. 


MARRIAGE, 


195 


That is, I used to repent, for there is no one for 
me to support or for her to grumble about now. 
They are dead, or pushing their own ways in the 
world, or far beyond any help of mine ; but even 
if this were not the case Catherine would not com- 
plain. 

A passage of arms occurred between us once, 
when, though I was severely wounded, she got the 
worst shock of the encounter. Since then Catherine 
has been more submissive, and I — more considerate. 

I wonder if she be really happy now ? I wonder 
if she ever think ours might have been a better 
life — made a better thing out of, somehow ? 

If I could even form an idea of what she might 
answer, I would ask her one evening in the twilight, 
or when the fire is burning low, to tell me all she 
thinks about it, but I dread being asked at the su- 
preme moment to light the gas, or to give her that 
work-basket containing those slippers, still un- 
finished, of which mention was honourably made in 
the first page of “ My First Love.” 

We have never been accustomed to talk. Some- 
body says, or rather, indeed, a great many persons 
say, talking is not conversing as eating is not dining, 
which is just one of those one-sided statements that 
makes a man who is not likely to be misled by a 
neatly turned sentence angry, more especially when 
he knows by bitter experience that conversing may 
be as far removed from talking as dining from 
eating. 

We never talked at any rate. We always con- 


196 


MY LAST LOVE, 


versed. This habit commenced in our honeymoon, 
and it grew stronger with age. If I were in the 
most terrible trouble I could only give my wife the 
barest outline of facts. To fill in the details would 
be a simple impossibility — to expatiate on how it 
affected me a feat beyond my power. Joan says I 
do not even talk to my children, but then she does 
not quite understand that if I did talk to them they 
would not appreciate the attention. 

Yes, taking it altogether mine has been a lonely 
life, though I have lived always amongst people — 
and a spoiled one, though I have made money as 
well as a fair reputation. It is a strange thing to 
consider how desolate one mischance may in reality 
leave a man, though apparently he have made a 
very good thing for himself of existence. If the fates 
decree that one is to be for fifty years out of the 
three score and ten wholly and solely a denizen 
of the world as the world obtains here in London, 
it might be as well to have no memories of mur- 
muring rivulets and quiet woods associated with the 
first twenty. 

Sentiment, for example, will never embitter the 
future happiness of my young people, who I earnestly 
hope will marry other young people as purely 
worldly and superficial as themselves. One of my 
sons has developed a certain talent for literature, 
and will, I doubt not, in time favour the world 
with various three-volume novels (if three volumes 
obtain so long), treating of that semi-fashionable 
society which he knows, and that entirely fashion- 


MARRIAGE. 


197 


able society which he is never likely to know, and 
in due time probably I shall appear in print as a 
respectable but unapproachable father. 

Well, so be it. Children it is said take after their 
mother. It is eminently llattering to my vanity to 
be quite satisfied none of mine take after me. 

To return, however, to the days when children 
were not in my home — neither the puling infant 
nor the young gentleman in knickerbockers — a style 
of costume that, despite Mr. Thackeray’s dictum and 
Messrs. Nicoll’s advertisement, I detest with a 
detestation worthy of a better cause— what can I 
recollect of those da3'^s ? All through my rambling 
talk I have been trying to remember. 

Any memory of home comfort ? Perhaps so : if 
home coinfort mean simply hot and cold water in 
one’s dressing-room, linen left out by my wife’s 
maid, for I kept no valet, dinner fairly cooked and 
reasonably hot, a fairly good glass of wine with 
and after it, breakfast to a moment in the morn- 
ing, I had home comforts. And the days were 
gone when a vision of a sweet face uplifted to mine, 
of the loving clasp of a soft hand, of a dear voice 
welcoming me after my labour, was the sum and 
total of the only home comfort I ever wished 01 
hoped to realize. People take to luxury and phy- 
sical ease when they find the “ better part ” of ex- 
istence cannot be possessed by them ; so, failing my 
dream habitation, which might have been uj) three 
pair of stairs or in Buckingham Palace for any local 
habitation I cared to give it, I was well enough 


98 


MY LAST LOVE, 


content to go back evening after evening to a house 
where the stairs were covered with the best and 
newest Brussels carpeting ; where I hung up my 
hat on a highly veneered stand, resplendent with a 
most unnecessary looking-glass ; where passing the 
dining-room door I could see the table set out in 
the best style by our youthful buttons ; where I 
could generally hear the tones of Catherine’s grand 
piano, and where as I entered the drawing-room, 
I was usually greeted not only by my wife, but 
also by a couple of her sisters, and sometimes by 
Mrs. Sherlock herself. 

And it did not then strike me as anything very 
dreadful that this was all the sort of home I was 
ever likely to know. When a man first takes pos- 
session of Mrs. Parkins’ first floor, (sitting-room 
with bed-room at the back and attendance), he does 
not fully realize what life in that lady’s desirable 
lodgings is certain to prove when weeks have 
passed into months and months into years ; and 
in like manner when people first marry they 
scarcely grasp the fact that it is for the whole of 
existence — that they have made a choice which can 
never be rescinded till they stand remorseful beside 
the death-bed of that him or her who chances to be 
husband or wife, and by the time they have made 
this discovery they have “ got used to it,” for great 
is the force of habit and the lulling effect of time. 

I got used to it. I am used to it. Were Cathe- 
rine to die, she would not have a sincerer mourner 
than myself ; but there is not, I am happy to say, 


MARRIAGE, 


199 


the slightest chance, speaking humanly, of my sur- 
vivorship. My wife has a capital constitution, and 
takes good care of it. She eats well, drinks well, 
sleeps well, and refrains from all undue mental ex- 
citement. In the future I mentally behold her a 
large, handsome, well preserved widow, taking an 
interest in all the affairs of this world, and keeping 
up a sort of visiting acquaintance with those of the 
next ; ruling her household to the last judiciously 
and severely ; regretting the late Mr. L. — she speaks 
of me as Mr. L. now, and though privately objecting 
strongly to the title, I am morally too great a coward 
to object publicly to any form of address she may 
be pleased to select. 

Time went by, and truly and duly I was a father 
and Mrs. Sherlock a grandmother. Great ceremo- 
nies attended the arrival and christening of that 
first-born. We were aU perhyps a little unduly ex- 
cited over the event, and considered it a stranger 
incident than might from the Registrar-General’s 
returns have been supposed. Catherine was one of 
those women who think it the correct thing to have 
a certain number of children (the more the better), 
just as they think it proper to have a large number 
of desirable acquaintances on their visiting list. I 
do not believe she was particularly fond of children, 
but she liked to be a mother. She liked the fuss 
which is always made on these occasions when 
women are well off and have plenty of female re- 
lations, — the bustle of preparation, and the excuse 
it gave for shopp ing and spending money, pleased 


200 


MV LAST LOVE, 


her inexpressibly; and when at length the little 
one came — a boy — well, well, it is not for me to 
throw stones, or to attempt too keenly to analyze 
what her feelings may have been, for I know when 
I went to my chambers that day, I dreamed another 
dream even more illusory than my last, about a son 
who should be to me what I had striven to be to 
my father ; to whom I could in the after-time talk, 
as the old man talked, thank God, to me ; who 
should be, if “ odd,” faithful, — if " peculiar,” intel- 
ligible, to my understanding: who should lack 
nothing my labour and my love might give him : 
who should resemble in his strength and his devo- 
tion and his tenderness Joan who had sat with me 
and Rose on the grass by the river-side, and pelted 
the birds with cherry-stones, and wandered wild 
through the woods and fields, and grown up finally 
into the noblest woman I ever knew. 

Dreams, friends, — air castles ; dreams from which 
1 have since awakened, — air castles I have beheld 
melt gradually away. I love my children, I hope, 
but I cannot help seeing what they are. Never an 
one of them has “strained back” to unselfishness 
and a high ideal of the duties which the very fact 
of being placed in this world devolves upon all men 
and all women. 

They are amiable enough as times go, and to a 
certain extent companionable also; but they have 
had everything they wanted, from their youth up, 
and I am not sure that it is a good thing for youth 
to have everything it wants, and to regard middle 


MARRIAGE. 


201 


and old age as an anomaly, which is permitted to 
exist merely because it has a certain power of work 
in it, and can provide the wherewithal for girls to 
go to balls, and boys to spend money recklessly at 
college. 

In the next generation it may be, there will be 
born to one of my children — for these things are 
inscrutable — a gipsy-faced little maiden who shall 
comfort the weary heart of some world-tired father, 
whom the heat and burden of his day has almost 
overpowered, and be as strong to help as she is 
powerful to console. 

Shall I live to see this dream-baby? Shall I, 
when feeble and white haired, look with dimmed 
vision into eyes that may remind me of that dream- 
sister now almost as far removed from me as though 
the valley of the shadow lay between ? Shall saucy 
tongue prattle to me with the daring abandon of 
the reckless Joan of old ? Shall a brown-skinned 
romp ever fling her arms about me, and kiss my 
furrowed face, as I have seen J oan kiss 5-ose ? 
Forgive me, friends, for I seem to be growing 
childish already, and it needs one fierce, wicked 
memory to convince me that I am not yet in my 
dotage. 

But a twelvemonth since Joan said to me, — 

‘ My second boy is so like you, Tom, that I wish 
you would let me bring him to see you.” 

And then I blazed out, — 

“ At your peril, J oan. I want to see no child of 
yours for ever.” In answer to which came no harsh 


14 


202 


MV LAST LOVE, 


words, though mothers are usually vicious towards 
those who turn aside from their offspring. 

She only said, “ My poor Tom and I could 
gather from her tone, though my glance was averted, 
that there were tears in those dark eyes (still beau- 
tiful), drawn from their fountain by pity for me. 

After all, why should I receive such pity ? Rose 
was only a weak woman, and she married another, 
leaving me lonely — as better and holier and truer 
men have been left lonely by woman since the 
beginning of time, and will be left tiU eternity. 

It is a misfortune to have a heart. Happily my 
children — over whom I lament to have sung so 
grievous a Jeremiad — are not much troubled with 
so delicate an organ. 

I mean mentally, of course. Physically I believe 
they are quite sound, tried by the best stethoscope. 


CHAPTEB V. 


MY VISITOR. 

T ime meanwhile went by in a quiet, orderly 
sort of way : he did not linger, he did not 
travel by express. There cannot be either much 
lingering or much express work in the life of a 
plodder, and that I soon became. 

It was needful to provide so many guineas a 
week for the household expenses deemed by my 
beloved necessaries ; it was essential for me also to 
consider rent and taxes, insurance — fire and life — 
the demands of tailor, milliner, and draper, and last 
and least (in point of expense) the modest sum re- 
quired to keep poverty from the little farm at South- 
gate. 

Taken in detail, the items might not be great, but 
taken in the aggregate and looking back dispas- 
sionately on the events of my life as though they 
had happened to another man, I think it was more 
than any one person ought to have been called upon 
to furnish out of his own brains. 


204 


MV LAST LOVE. 


Ladies, of course, will call me a “ brute ” for such 
a remark, but that is merely because as yet ladies 
are not men. When Messrs. Mill and Bright trans- 
form them into the baser sex— and with masculine 
privileges force masculine responsibilities upon them, 
as I hope the champions of women’s rights may — 
the dear creatures will better understand what I 
mean, and wonder, perchance, “How men endured 
it so long.” Endured, — that is, the social humbug 
which makes it necessary for a man, no matter 
what his ways and means may be, to live in a given 
style : to allow his wife so much a week : to take a 
house at so much a year, and as a rule choose the 
alternative of bankruptcy or softening of the brain. 

The present writer has experienced neither dis- 
ease, and yet he dare affirm more husbands by ten 
thousand die of the causes which produce both 
results, than any registrar-general is ever likely to 
guess. 

Men’s lives are, as a rule, spent in keeping roofs 
over other people’s heads, — in maintaining a house- 
hold from which they derive no benefit, — in paying 
tradesmen’s bills for food they never eat, — in seeing 
that rent for places they never see save late at night 
and early in the morning, falls into no arrear. 

Most wonderful is this London existence. Mar- 
vellous even to those who are pilgrims through it, 
as well as to the mere lookers-on. 

But I digress; and yet, no — for this everlasting 
wear and tear, this mental and physical strain which 
tided my strength and taxed my euergies to their 


MV VISITOR. 


205 


utmost in the days when I was but a struggling 
barrister, and an author little known, have made 
me, I think, as much as Rose’s desertion, the man 
people say I am. 

At the recollection of the earlier years of my 
married life, I. shudder. Ease of mind I never 
knew, rest of body I never had. It was all very 
well for Catherine — a woman possessed of a power 
of enjoying unbroken slumbers, I believe to be 
unequalled — to talk of my morning’s sleep, and my 
Sunday afternoon nap ; she did not know the former 
was earned by a night devoted to the next chapter 
in my novel, or the consideration of ways and 
means ; and that the latter was a mere excuse for 
getting rid of the chit-chatter of her visitors. 

First or last I never told my wife our commence- 
ment was a mistake, — that we began just about 
where we should have left off ; and that so far as 
I am personally concerned, until within the last few 
years, life has been a mere fight — to keep the wolf 
from this door and from that. 

Before my books were hatched in my brain, the 
poor chickens — lean and meagre enough — were sold, 
and the proceeds paid away; before I held my 
briefs, the guineas they brought in were condemned. 
I have been what the world calls a prosperous man, 
and yet I can honestly declare I have envied my 
clerk and my errand boy ; and believing Catherine’s 
“ Buttons” to be pecuniarily solvent, I have often 
envied him too. 

For it is true, Mesdames and Demoiselles though 


2o6 


MV LAST LOVE. 


you may not believe me, that life in the nineteenth 
century is not all play, and that the man who sets 
out determined to maintain a certain position, has 
lather more work before him than he might exactly 
relish, could he, looking forward, foresee all his 
head and his hands must find to do. 

I found it to do, and did it — and for so much am 
thankful — but had I to begin the battle over again, 
not all the mothers-in-law in England would per- 
suade me to commence life in that unexceptionable 
home, provided with good (and expensive) servants, 
furnished with the best furniture from garret to 
kitchen, and stamping us as “persons bound to 
keep up a certain appearance.” 

We have kept that appearance up, and society 
and my wife are satisfied. Why then should I be 
dissatisfied ? — I, who have been the humble means 
of pleasing the ruling powers ? When the good 
time comes-^and the clergyman treads swift on the 
lieels of the doctor, and the undertaker walks lightly 
and rapidly after both, to take the last measurement 
my body will ever require — no one can say I have 
not, as a Briton, done my duty. 

I have married, and children have been born to 
me. I have paid rent and taxes for a period which 
seems illimitable and with a resignation that might 
touch the heart of Mr. Lowe himself. I have fed 
servants whom I never wanted ; entertained visitors 
1 never desired to see ; made money for the benefit 
of West End tradespeople, and being in Rome, failed 
in no respect, according to my light, to do as Rome 
desired. 


MV VISITOR. 


207 


And yet I think I was a fool for my pains. Better 
a “ genteel six-roomed residence,” than this ceaseless 
money-getting and money-paying. Better, ah I 
heaven, a hundred times the dinner of herbs pro- 
cured for cash than the stalled ox purchased on 
credit, or purchased at least thus far on credit, 
that the money for our Sunday’s joint and trim- 
mings was never in my pocket on the Saturday 
night preceding. 

Well, it was to he, I suppose, — at all events it 
was,— and time and I and work went on together, 
and the pecuniary tread-mill became a familiar flight 
of steps. 

Supposing a man to be successful in business, he 
can employ clerks, and so superintend their doings ; 
he can turn his thousands by paying thousands. 
But suppose a barrister, or an author, salary his ten 
heads or twenty pair of hands, can he indite the life 
history of Smith by instructing Jones to bring him 
in so many folios closely written, or can he defend 
the cause of Brown by telling Robinson to notice 
all the nicest points in the case ? 

Decidedly not ; and therefore, oh ! millionaire, 
when you hold up your hands for the future at the 
price paid for his work to some poor devil whom 
you honour by occasionally asking to dinner, or 
grudge Mr. Sarjeant the hundred-guinea fee that is 
his due, — just please to take these small matters into 
consideration. The capital of each is in his head, 
and if you could only imagine how often authors 
and barristers have a quarrel with that banker in 


2o8 


MY LAST LOVE. 


order to get him to honour their drafts, you would 
think law and literature none such pleasant profes- 
sions after all. 

But, pshaw !— why should I preach ? my day 
has been profitable, and if I have worked what 
then ? It is the lot of man, and work has been 
more blessed to me than any leisure I can imagine. 
Yea, truly. 

Nevertheless, I worked, and hard, for which rea- 
son I often remained late at my chambers, instead 
of seeking that relaxation in the bosom of a steadily 
increasing family, which I am given to understand 
is good alike for the soul and body of man. 

Catherine, fortunately, was not of a suspicious 
disposition, or what she might have thought of my 
constant professional absorption, who can say ? 

Many wives do not credit the narratives men tell 
concerning important business engagements, and 
work pursued far into the night, away from home, 
and in many cases there is reason for this unbelief 
but so far as I am concerned, had the partner of 
my joys, and the liberal disburser of my earnings, 
done me the honour of making a friendly call in 
Pump Court at almost any hour in the evening, 
she would have found me busy with brief or 
manuscript, guiltless of any act or thought or pro- 
ject disloyal to her. 

But Catherine never did me the honour of calling, 
and in all candour I may say I did not want her to 
do so. Having to work, it was best for me to labour 
on without even the pleasing distraction of a visit 


MV VISITOR, 


209 


from my wife. Very few people came “ in a friendly 
way” to my chambers, where briefs now arrived 
rapidly as could be desired. I had not many male 
acquaintances, and as for women I was scarcely on 
more than speaking terms with any save those of 
my own household. 

Day after day I wended my way through the 
Temple — (before my marriage I had left Staples 
Inn, for more legally aristocratic quarters), — until 
every stone in the place grew familiar as the fields 
and woods of my boyhood had been. Day after 
day I repaired to court, and sometimes won the suit 
and sometimes lost it. Most frequently, however, 
fortune was with me. Night after night I worked 
late and hard, allowing myself little relaxation, 
except an occasional half-hour’s walk under the win- 
ter stars, or in the summer evening’s twilight through 
the deserted nooks and corners of the Temple. 

How many dinners I ate in those years at the 
“ George,” I should be afraid to reckon. How many 
cigars I smoked pacing slowly round the church of 
the old Knights Templar, or walking by Goldsmith’s 
grave, or (more rarely) sauntering through the gar- 
dens, it would be impossible to count. Essentially 
I had become a lonely man, caring but little for 
anything save my profession and the money it 
brought me, valuing literary success merely just so 
far as it contributed towards the support of a rising 
family, and attaching importance to adverse criticism 
only to the extent it reduced the amount of the next 
cheque sent by my publishers. 


210 


MV LAST LOVE. 


Occasionally Catherine and I went to parties 
together ; sometimes even we repaired in each other’s 
company to the theatre and the opera, but as a 
rule she accompanied her father and mother, or 
matronized her sisters to those festive gatherings 
which were in our sphere considered amusing and 
proper. 

I had not, in a general way, time to spend on 
what my wife called “ keeping up our connection,” 
so she sedulously devoted herself to that pleasing 
duty, and at this moment were anyone to enquire of 
Mrs. Luttrell as to the special causes which have 
contributed to such worldly success as we can boast, 
she would, I doubt not, answer, “ Well, you know, I 
did not, like many women, relinquish society when 
I married ; I was always careful to make and retain 
desirable acquaintances.” 

And to do her justice she was; but were the debit 
and credit column added up, and a strict account 
made out of profit and loss, the result of Catherine’s 
♦ actics would not, I think, prove to have been gain. 
However, she believes she has fulfilled the duty 
(jf existence, and no doubt she is right since every 
one says how desiiable a thing it is for a professional 
man to possess so admirable a wife. 

I wish some one would tell me why — and inform 
me at the same time what possible advantage it 
can be to a man for a woman to dress herself out, 
evening after evening, like Solomon in all his glory, 
for the mere sake of making the eighteenth at a 
dinner-party, or the two hundred and first at one of 


MV VISITOR, 


li\ 

those popular entertainments ironically called an 
“ At Home.” 

From all of which the attentive reader will readily 
understand that we soon became a very fashionable 
couple, interfering little one with the other, meeting 
only at breakfast on week-days, and having but 
little in common to talk over when Sunday came, 
and with the day of rest orthodox church-going, 
early dinner, and an afternoon devoted to the claims 
of society and the pleasure of seeing many callers. 

Occasionally, indeed, we had dinner parties, and 
then I reached our house in time to see to the wines 
and receive my wife’s instructions as to whom I was 
to take down ; while once at least in every season 
my wife issued cards for an “ At Home,” more 
crowded, more uncomfortable, and more hot than 
any she herself had attended, on which occasion it 
was de rigueur that I should be in attendance 
though I am sure nobody wanted me, and I did not 
want myself. 

My real "At Home,” however, was in Pump 
Court, when with closely drawn curtains and blazing 
fire, I settled myself down for an evening’s thorough 
work. Even now I can recall the peace of those 
quiet hours ; I can look back with satisfaction on 
the amount of willing labour I got through in the 
days, and months, and years between the first 
romance of my life and my last — ^between the first 
sorrow of my existence, which 1 got over, and that 
last which is present with me even now. 

Anxieties I had, it is true, and the eternal pressure 


212 


MV LAST LOVE. 


of providing for a style of living far beyond ni}’ 
actual position in life. As my brothers grew older 
also my responsibilities seemed to increase. They 
were always getting into scrapes ; one, indeed, got 
into something worse than a scrape, and it needed 
much money and, what was even more important, 
much, time to extricate him, and of course the whole 
burden of trouble and expense and anxiety fell 
on me. 

But my shoulders were broad, and the burden was 
not more than I could caiTy, and I did, or thought I 
did, my duty, and the old love lay buried under the 
apple-blossoms, and the soft green turf, and the dead 
autumnal leaves of the long ago time. 

For years I had never beheld Kose Surry — never 
heard tidings of her. 

Sometimes, indeed, I saw the names of Sir Walter 
and Lady Surry mentioned amongst those of other 
fashionable persons who had graced with their pre- 
sence,” or “ been honoured with invitations,” but 
this was all. 

I had learnt only through the columns of the 
Times that Sir Humphrey Surry was dead and that 
Sir Walter the new king reigned in his stead, but 
my way lay so far apart from theirs, it was hard to 
understand how the threads of our lives could ever 
have crossed even for a moment, and sometimes I 
looked back upon the whole love story but as an 
unsubstantial dream. 

The present baronet was a different individual, 
indeed, from the late Sir Humphrey, and at his 


MV VISITOR, 


213 


grand town house tliere were assemblies, and balls, 
and dinner parties innumerable, whilst when the 
season was over I read about the great people who 
were “ partaking of the hospitalities of Gh'ay- 
borough.” That was the way I think the gentle- 
man who wrote the passage worded it. 

Once, indeed, meeting Dick Tullett in the street 
(hearing I was slightly Bohemian he had eschewed 
all intimate acquaintance with me, and I had not 
cared to renew it even when the " elegancies and 
refinements of life ” were, thanks to Mrs. Luttrell’s 
good management, inmates of my home, though my 
wife and family now visit his), he told me he was 
going down to Grayborough, where I found subse- 
quently he had formed one of a distinguished circle 
invited thither as guests of Sir Walter and Lady 
Surry. 

He did not add he was going in order to paint 
her portrait. The man was ashamed of his trade 
and did not care to mention it, but I found out his 
errand to Grayborough, when next year I saw in 
the newspapers a criticism on Lady Surry’s portrait 
in the Academy, painted by Richard Tullett, Esq., 
R.A. 

I did not go to the Academy that season. She 
was too greatly removed, we were too far separated 
by rank and circumstances for even a pulse to beat 
the quicker at sight of her name, nevertheless, being 
married myself and she married, I thought it best 
to stay away. The disillusion also might have been 
too bitter. It was the child Rose— the darling } 


214 


MV LAST LOVE. 


met by the river now flowing on solitary — the sweet 
child-girl of a later growth whom I could remember 
so distinctly without bitterness, and I had no wish 
to see the woman, even on canvas, who was now far 
from me as the heaven from the earth. 

So I did not go, and Lady Surry hung in a good 
light on the Academy walls, and Mr. Tullett’s for- 
tune was made. Had Rose been my wife, her por- 
trait should not have been stared at by thousands 
in a public building, but then she was Lady Surry, 
a celebrated beauty, and I only a commoner with 
strong ideas concerning the sacredness of a woman’s 
loveliness. 

Had she been my wife T should have kept that 
portrait within my holy of holies, but then she was 
not my wife, and of course no one came to consult 
me on the subject. At a later period Mrs. Luttrell’s 
portrait, to which allusion has already been made, 
also graced the Academy walls, but this publicity 
was entirely of her own choosing, and as I never 
could have forced a full comprehension on her of my 
intense dislike to such exhibitions the subject was 
not mooted between us. 

She got the portrait painted at a very reasonable 
rate on the stipulation that it was to be exhibited, 
and when she told me a Mr. Snooks, who dined 
frequently at our house, and was a very good judge 
of the quality of our wines, had offered to perpetuate 
her charms on canvas, and purposed giving that por- 
tion of the British public who delight in eflTect and 
delight in art an opportunity of beholding them, I 


MV VISITOR. 


215 


said never a word in deprecation of her design. I 
did not even ask how much it was to cost, for 
fortune had smiled on me, and a few pounds more 
or less was not of such paramount importance as 
had once been the case. 

So Mrs. Luttrell was duly done in oils, and Snooks 
got several good orders in consequence. 

But as I was saying, had Rose been my wife 
that portrait should not have appeared in the cata/- 
logue. 

I have had a copy of it made since, or rather a 
copy of it was made for me, but it gives me very 
little idea of Rose. 

Of course after a thing of this sort has been 
copied, that copy photographed, the photograph 
re-drawn, and that re-production printed off, the 
likeness to the original sitter cannot be considered 
admirable, and yet I think the face which a judi- 
cious publisher has considered it prudent to include 
amongst the attractions of this story is not wholly 
unlike that which Tullett, R.A., painted, though it 
does not in the slightest degree resemble Rose — at 
least not to my mind — other people thought the 
original painting admirable, but in this as in many 
things more or less important, other people and I 
joined issue. 

I never believed Dick Tullett, whether boy or 
man, could paint a woman, and I see no reason to 
alter my opinion — he has been dexterous, as you 
will observe, in the treatment of her necklace and 
drapery, but he was no more fortunate in his por- 


2i6 


MV LAST LOVE. 


trait of Lady Surry than of the child Rose, which he 
sketched in chalk one summer evening long ago— 
oh ! so long. 

It was many a day after that portrait was painted 
ere I saw Rose again, and I am told there was a 
period in her life when the sweetness vanished out 
of her face, and there lay a sorrowful, almost sullen 
look in those eyes that had been so pure and inno- 
cent. 

Fashionable hours, a perpetual round of visiting, 
whirling here and whirling there, being admired, 
flattered, yielded to, did not, I am told, improve her 
temper or her nature, and this may be so ; but all I 
know is that when we met again she was gentle and 
tender as of old, and that to whomsoever else she 
may have seemed arrogant and perverse, the only 
memory of her my heart holds is the recollection 
of a woman sweet and clinging, meek and loveable 
and loving ; the Rose of the murmuring rivulet ; the 
Rose who stood out with me under the moonlight 
when the apple-blossoms carpeted the ground, 
grown to womanhood unchanged in heart, unspoiled 
in nature. 

But you want to know, at least I hope you do, 
when and how we met again after a lapse of time 
which had aged me considerably and made me a 
very different looking fellow to the Tom Luttrell 
who picked my first love’s reticule out of the stream 
and sat on the brink with Joan and Rose, eating 
cherries and watching the trout gleaming in and oul 
amongst the alders 


MV VISITOR. 


217 


Marriage ages a working man everywhere, when 
once the tirst illusion is over, and he comes practi- 
cally to understand the meaning of “little h ills /* 
and to know that a house, and wife, and a family 
cannot be maintained on air ; that baker, butcher, 
tailor, shoemaker and milliner are tangible beings, 
oftentimes terrible realities ; but in London the 
pace being faster and the expenses greater, and the 
time for mental and physical repose more limited, 
husbands age more rapidly than elsewhere. 

I did at all events. While Lady Surry was still 
beautiful and still young, I had settled down into 
a grave, thoughtful man. Lines were traced across 
my forehead ; grey hairs had cropped up from time 
to time ; when I looked in the glass it was a face 
changed and worn that gazed back at me steadily 
and steadfastly, with grave thoughtful eyes. My 
youth was gone, and my elasticity with it. Already 
the life insurance seemed a good and desirable pro- 
perty, for I had left all dreams behind me, and 
understood thoroughly that the end of all our dreams 
is the last sound sleep, which none of the voices, 
whether sweet or harsh, that have disturbed and 
distracted us here shall be able to break. 

I was sitting alone in my chambers one winter’s 
night, just as I am doing now, only at this moment 
I chance to be writing a story, and then I was 
reading one, the plot whereof turned on a will over 
which two brothers were disputing, and the denote- 
ment of which was still uncertain — my man, I ought 
to say, lost, though I believe he lost righteously— 


2X8 


MV LAST LOVE. 


when there came a ring at the hall door, closed long 
previously, and a moment afterwards the small boy 
who stole my stamps, smoked my cigars, read my 
letters, forgot to deliver messages, and who, in addi- 
tion to his other sins, chanced to be a son of the 
elderly female who professed to keep my chambers 
clean and failed to do so, came head-first into the 
room, full of the astounding intelligence — 

" Please, sir, a lady wants to see you, sir/* 

" What lady ?” I asked, for the cave of St. Kevin 
or the isle of St. Senanus was not more innocent of 
female presence than those chambers in Pump Court. 
“ What lady ?” and then, looking up, I sat like one 
bewildered because of the apparition I beheld. 

“ Lady Surry !” I gasped. 

She came across to the table against which I now 
stood unable to move, unable almost to believe the 
evidence of my senses. She laid her hand on my 
arm, and said just one word, “ Tom.” 

That was all, and yet in a moment the mist of the 
years, with their misery and trouble, their labour 
and their anguish, seemed lifted like a veil, and I 
was young again, and life was still before me, and I 
was wandering, happy and unheeding, through the 
Elysian fields of yore. 


CHAPTER VL 


LADY SURRY. 

T BffiRE are stories told of persons who, sleeping 
for only two minutes, have yet managed to 
dream dreams the actions and events of which were 
carried on through years— and I believe those 
stories, for although I was then wide awake, I 
dreamed a dream, in the span of about a single 
second of time, which extended over the happiest 
part of my life. 

True my vision ended, before she took her hand 
away — it was over, and we both stood — parted — she 
a wife, I a husband, and yet not husband and wife ; 
she a mother, I a father, and yet neither a drop’s 
blood to the children of each other — parted as 
utterly as man and woman could be parted — we 
who had once been so much, she to me and I to her. 
So much ! had we not been all in all ? 

“I am afraid I surprised — startled you,” she 
began, “ but I had not another friend in the world 
to whom I could come but yourself." 


220 


MY LAST LOVE, 


I pulled my own especial chair round to the fire 
for her, and seated myself at a little distance before 
I could quite steady my voice to answer. Then I 
said — 

What is the matter — what is wrong T 
Everything,” she answered, “ and I want you to 
put it right.” And then she looked at the fire for 
a second or so, and I could see that her face was 
worn and pale, and that her eyes — those dear, 
sweet, honest, childish eyes I remembered so well- — 
were full of tears. “ You are not angry with me for 
coming here, Tom, are you ?” she asked at length. 

" Angry, Lady Surry !” I repeated. 

" Call me Rose,” she said. “ It will sound like 
the old times, and we have never been other than 
friends, have we ?” 

“ No, indeed !” I answered. 

Yet for the life of me I could not help remember- 
ing how much more than friends we had once been, 
and I wondered how she could forget or ignore it ; 
but then women are mysteries (woman is the real 
enigma of existence), and the extent to which they 
can forget and ignore, even while recalling, is mar- 
vellous to the present writer. 

‘‘All these years I have watched your success, 
I have read your books, I have been proud of and 
jealous for you as Joan might be. I heard of you 
— of you all. Though I never wrote, I never forgot 
Joan nor any of you.” 

Not knowing what reply to make to this, I held 
my peace. 


LAny sc//^j^y. 


221 


" I thought of writing to you often,” she went on, 
" to say how glad I was to hear of your success, and 
to ask after Joan, and the rest; but then I decided 
I would not. You did not think me unkind, did 
you r 

I should have thought it a most marvellous 
thing had shq written, though such letters are sent 
daily, I believe, in London ; and yet I was pleased 
to know the tender little heart had felt impelled to 
send some token of remembrance, though it fluttered 
back again without fulfilling its purpose. 

“No,” I said, “ I could never think you unkind.” 

“ Tlmnk you,” she said. “ And I knew that 
although you had become a great author ” (Heaven 
help her innocence !) “ and been so successful in 
every way ” (I felt as if my soul must have uttered 
a cry at hearing this, as if I must tell her what a 
wretched unsatisfactory life it had all been), “ you 
would not quite forget old times, but help me if you 
could.” 

I got up from my chair and paced the room once, 
twice, thrice. I verily believed if she went on 
much longer she would drive me mad. 

I thought of the Egyptian bondage into which 
I had sold myself — and there sat she, the only 
thing I had ever desired or hoped to possess, con- 
gratulating me on having partaken of the leeks 
and cucumbers of that accursed land. 

Why could she not have Ifeft me alone ? Why 
had she ever come there ? 

“ Rose ” — I spoke her name quite distinctly, and 


222 


MY LAST LOVE. 


without a tremour in my voice ; it was the first 
time since her marriage it had ever to my know- 
ledge passed my lips; when delirious, no doubt I 
spoke it often enough. “Rose, if you want my 
help, I am ready to give it, if I can serve you — with 
all the veins of my heart I will do so — but for God’s 
sake let the dead past lie buried — do not talk ol 
old times to me.” 

Then she turned away, and I knew it was to hide 
her tears. 

These women, oh, these women ! they turn down 
a page in a man’s life’s book, and go away and 
attend to a thousand things ; tliey marry, they bear 
children, they make a hundred fresh friends, they 
have a score of admirers, and then, after years, they 
return and open the old book, and expect that the 
tale can be proceeded with, or the former story re- 
called innocently or half indifferently as once they 
read it : whilst the man 

Well, I had set Rose crying — not a difficult oper- 
ation to perform — poor Rose. 

“ I did not mean to wound you,” I began, when I 
could endure the sight of her grief no longer. 

“ I know you did not,” she answered, “ but I am 
so miserable and so stupid.” 

“ What is the matter V 1 asked. 

“ Walter will not let me live with him any 
longer, and he has taken my children away.” 

“ And you ” 

“ I have done nothing wrong — oh ! Tom,” she 
cried passionately, “if nobody else believes in me, 


LADY SURRY, 


223 


won't you? He has been so cruel and so hard; 
and then to take away my children.” She never 
said “ our children.” She never, first or last, 
through that interview wept or made lamentation 
for him. 

“ Have you left Grayborough, then,” I inquired. 

“ No, but he has, and taken my children too, and 
I could not. stay there alone. He calculated on 
that — and I have come up here to ask you to help 
me. I do not want money — or anything — if he 
v/ill only give me my children.” 

That was the refrain. Poor little desolate heart, 
she could not remain alone — she could not live 
separated from those she loved. Through a mist I 
saw the child I had first beheld sobbing by the 
stream, little caring in her babyish grief what the 
future might have to hold for her beside her 
mother’s anger at the drenched reticule. And the 
years had come, and the years had gone, and be- 
hold this was what they had brought— -a loveless 
marriage — a distrust*^ul husband — a desolate home, 
and a frantic flight to the only being who could, 
she said, help her. 

I had thought much and often about Lady Surry 
during the course of my married life, but I had 
never dreamed of anything like this — never seen 
her, even in the wildest of fancy's night-mares, 
sitting thus in my chambers — a despised wife — a 
childless mother — a lonely, broken-hearted woman. 

‘^It can soon be set right though,^' I said at 
length, speaking rather as the sequence of a long 


224 


MY LAST LOVE, 


train of thought than in answer to her last remark ; 
but Rose shook her head — 

Walter was always jealous/^ she explained, ^^he 
never quite trusted me. He knew — ” at this point 
islie stopped and hesitated, and I did not eneourage 
her to proceed — we both understood the finish of 
the unspoken sentenee too well. 

If I am to be of any serviee to you,^^ I began 
after a short pause, you must be frank with me ; 
tell me the whole story from beginning to end, so far 
as it eoneerns this matter.^^ 

I will try,^^ she said, bearing and leaning baek 
in the ehair, she began at the eommencement of 
her trouble, and told me all about it right through 
without a break. 

^ There was not much in it, nothing but the usual 
tale of a man^s jealousy and a woman's folly. Rose 
had always been a little simpleton, and furthermore 
a naughty, perverse child, going where she was 
told not to go, and doing the things she had been 
bidden to leave alone. 

Sitting there listening to her confession, I re- 
membered how having been ordered not to go to 
the river she went — alas ! for me. 

Well, the whole of her married life had been on 
a piece with that. If Walter Suriy desired her 
not to waltz, the first thing he beheld was Rose 
whirling round to the music of the then most 
fashionable trois temps. If he told her he wished 
sueh and such persons treated with only distant 
courtesy, he was certain to find the obnoxious indi- 


LADY SURRY. 


22 $ 


viduals in her box at the opera, beside her carriage 
in the Row, close at hand in the ball-rooms. 

I could have led her with a silken thread, or I 
fancy I could, which comes to much about the same 
thing; but knowing the persistent obstinacy with 
which she disregarded her mother's commands, I 
arrived at the conclusion, that on the whole, Walter 
Surry's life with his wife had not been one of un- 
mixed happiness, that, with his temperament, the 
blessing of such a wife as Rose could not have 
nroved entirely unmixed, and at first, I confess my 
sympathies were with him, but when she went on to 
tell me how he intercepted her letters, and held 
her answerable for the impertinent folly of a man 
who thought she meant to give him encourage- 
ment, when she was only in her folly trying to 
pass the hours pleasantly with a pleasant com 
panion, whom she had once assured me she hated " 
— when she recited her tears and prayers — her 
frantic assurance of innocence, her entreaties that 
he would not part her from her children — the pity 
of old stirred within my heart, and for one mo- 
ment — one wild, mad, passionate moment — I re- 
flected had I been but free, and that this chance 
had offered, I would, in spite of fifty husbands, 
have taken her to myself, and kept her — so far as it 
lay in the power of man to do it — free from harm 
and sorrow for ever. 

And then, thank God, that feeling passed away, 
for I remembered what she was, and what I, and 


226 


MV LAST LOVE, 


that there lay between us that which no honest 
man, no virtuous woman, may ever cross. 

To me slie might be Rose — but she was also 
Lady Surry; to her I might be Tom, the lover of 
her girlhood — but I was also Tom, the husband of 
another woman — the father of many children — who 
could never be aught to her in the future save friend 
or brother. 

He had tried to tire her out — to compel her to 
leave and return to her mother; but here again 
Rosens persistency stood her in good stead. 

I have done nothing wrong,''^ she contended, 

and I shall not go.” 

Then he went himself, and had the children 
conveyed away likewise. 

That was this morning, Rose explained, and 
to-night I am here. I arrived in town about six 
o’clock, and went to an hotel and got a directory, 
and found out where your chambers were. I did 
not want to go to your house if I could avoid doing 
so.^' 

What a goose she was ! I, with my evil know- 
ledge of the world — learned in a school where the 
world always turns its worst side out — stood aghast 
at her lack of the most ordinary prudence. 

Knowing her husband to be jealous — knowing 
there were a thousand tongues ready to make a 
nine days’ tattle about her, waiting only the signal 
for attack to tear her fair fame to pieces, she left 
the secure shelter of her home, travelled to London 
without even a -maid, drove to a grand West End 


LADY SURRY, 


227 


hotel, and came out at the latest time in the evening 
she could well select — to see me, it was true — but, 
so far as society was concerned, or knew, to see 
anybody. 

Thinking all this over, I said — 

'^You must go back by the first train to-morrow 
morning.^' 

No,^^ she rei)Hed, I will never enter Walter 
Surry^s house again.” 

Folly !” I exclaimed, and then she burst out 
crying. 

He had taken everything from her she cared to 
have — all she wanted now was peace and her chil- 
dren.” 

“ Then,” I remarked, " you must come to my 
house ; if I am to interfere in this matter at all, you 
must follow my advice ; and I will have nothing to 
do with the business if you persist in staying alone 
at a London hotel, at the mercy of Dick, Tom, and 
Harry’s good-natured inferences. In fact, you ought 
not to have come to London at all. A letter would 
have brought me down by the first train.” 

Would it ?” she answered, faintly — " I was afraid 
it might not.” 

Might not — ah ! Rose. 

She still sat leaning back in her chair, with the 
fire-light playing over her face, and I could not help 
remarking how wan and changed she looked — ^how 
changed from the Rose Surry I had seen driving in 
the park ! 

Are you quite well ?” I asked at length, meeting 


228 


MY LAST LOVE, 


her questioning glance. I mean, do you feel 
strong, and in quite good health, excepting the fa- 
tigue consequent on your journey 

Yes, quite,^^ she answered ; and then added, 
hurriedly — Oh ! you will get me back my chil- 
dren, or I shall die 1’^ 

And you will return to Grayborough.^^ 

No, the solitariness would drive me mad.” 

^'Will you come home with me?” 

Yes, anywhere not to be alone.” 

“We had better go at once, then,” I remarked, 
“ and I will think over the best plan to pursue be- 
tween this and to-morrow morning.” 

She rose at my words like a child, and saying sim- 
l)ly, “ Thank you, Tom — I leave it all in your hands 
MOW,” moved towards the door. On her way, how- 
ever, she stopped, and, turning to me, remarked ner- 
vously — 

“ But your wife, — will she not object ?” 

“ It is that you may have the protection of my 
wife I propose your coming to our house : only pray 
do not mention you have had any quarrel with your 
husband : you can say you have come to town on 
business, and I thought it must be uncomfortable 
for you to stop at your great town establishment 
alone.” 

She opened her eyes in astonishment at my ad- 
vising her to even insinuate a falsehood, but said 
she would do whatever I told her, though she did 
uot much like it. 

And you were right, my dear, and I wrong, for the 


LAny 


229 


truth — no matter how inexpedient it may seem at 
first — is always best in the- long run. I might have 
learned this in the eourse of my praetice, but I had 
not, and behold the use I made of my worldly know- 
ledge conned since the days when we walked toge- 
ther by stream, o’er lea, through copse, was to teach 
my darling in her extremity to be false — false with 
intention, spite of her cowardice, 1 verily believe, for 
the first time in all her life. 

When we went out into Pump Court, the rain was 
pouring in torrents, and siie clung to me whilst try- 
ing to shelter her with my umbrella. We walked 
together over the dri})ping pavement I had paced so 
many a hundred times alone, beneath the porch of 
the Temple Church, and so into Fleet Street. Then 
I left her in the shelter of a doorway for a minute, 
whilst I secured a cab. 

]\Iy darling, I have often wondered since what you 
thought of during those few seconds when you stood 
all alone in an unfamiliar London street — all alone in 
the world, indeed, except for me ! 

As we drove to my home, I called at the hotel 
where she had left her luggage, and desired the 
waiter to inform Sir Walter Surry when he arrived 
in town, that Lady Surry had gone to stay with her 
friends at the address I gave him. 

The man knew me by reputation. I had risen 
high enough in my profession for that, and I felt 
thankful at having put the affair right so far. How 
Mrs. Luttrell might take Lady Surry^s introduction 
to our domestic hearth at such a time of night, was 


2^0 


MY LAST LOVE. 


quite another question, but one which had to be 
faced. My own opinion was, she would put Lady 
Surry’s rank on the credit side of her mind, against 
the natural prejudice existing on the debit. 

She had known of my attachment to Rose. She 
was well aware I had loved the young lady very 
dearly, and it is never a pleasant thing for a woman 
to reflect she has caught a man’s heart on the re- 
bound — supposing she fancies she has caught it at 
all — for which reasons I did not think she would 
approve of Lady Surry’s visit, but then on the other 
hand she was Lady Surry, and I heard in imagina- 
tion my Catherine discoursing to future callers con- 
cerning her visitor ; I could see her mentally plan- 
ning a journey to Grayborough in expectation of the 
invitation which must surely come ; and I could pro- 
phetically hear her telling me in the dead of night 
what a nice connection it would prove in future days 
for the children. 

I thought of all this as we drove wearily along in 
the cab. Ah ! days long past, it was not in such 
prosaic musings I occupied myself when a boy 1 car- 
ried my future love home in my arms to the Hall ; 
or when a man I whispered my love to her in the 
spring twilight ! 

It all turned out as I expected : Mrs. Luttrell did 
not quite like the intrusion, yet was she gracious and 
hospitable ; but I could see Rose did not take much 
to my wife. She shrank a little, it seemed to me, 
from the apparent warmth of Catherine’s welcome, 
and she looked at me pitifully from time to time in 


LADY SURRY. 


231 


a way which I should have interpreted to mean, 
even had she not afterwards translated it into words 
during my wife's momentary absence from the 
room — 

" Oh I Tom, if she knew how it all was, she would 
not wish me to be here." 

We must put it right then," I answered, cheer- 
fully, and the poor little soul went to bed happier, J 
think* 


CHAPTER VIL 


ALL WEONO. 


HE first hours of that night, which ought to 



± have been devoted to slumber, were spent by 
Catherine in questioning and cross-questioning me 
concerning Lady Surry, and considering the practice 
I had gone through in that sort of thing — cross-ques- 
tioning other people — I cannot say I came out of the 
ordeal well. 

During the course of that conversation I told her 
a great many things which would have inevitably re- 
sulted in a prosecution for perjury had they been 
stated on oath. She wanted to know so much too 
much. She asked me how I knew Lady Surry was 
in London, — if she had sent for me, — how it hap- 
pened that the servants were not at the town house, 
— above all, how it chanced Lady Surry had not 
brought her maid. 

Good gracious/^ I answered, I never imagined 
you wanted the maid. Shall I send for her in the 
morning 


ALL WRUNG, 


233 


No ! oh, no Catherine said, adding next mo- 
ment, however, regretfully, ** but the servants may 
wonder, you know.” 

‘^So they may, with all my heart,” I replied; 

still, if you want the maid, have her by all means. 
My notion is, however, she would only be making 
our people discontented.” 

Indeed, that is very true,” Mrs. Luttrell kindly 
agreed, and there ensued a silence, which was broken 
by my wife saying, a minute or so afterwards, — 

Do you not think we might manage to give a 
party whilst Lady Surry is with us ?” 

Certainly ; but had we not one a fortnight ago?” 

Yes, — only — ” 

“ Oh, if you want to give another, I have no ob- 
jection ; however, I do not think it can be whilst 
Lady Surry is here, as I know she wishes to stay in 
town as short a time as possible.” 

I did not think of that,” murmured Catherine, 
and I fondly hoped she was going to sleep ; but no, 
she commenced in a second or two again, Ibeshei 
than ever, trying to pump what business this was on 
which Rose had come to London. 

Now in a general way, this was a proceeding to 
which I should have put an immediate stop, for I 
never had spoken to my wife about my clients, and 
I did not allow her to speak concerning them to 
me, but on this occasion I proved a coward — I 
think men always are cowards when speaking to 
women about women — and put her off, or tried to 
do so, until she fairly compelled me to make up a 


16 


*34 


MV LAST LOVE. 


falsehood for her especial benefit, and tell her a 
long story about a relation of Sir Waller's who had 
been entrapped into a low match, and got into trou- 
ble, and that Rose had thought of me, and offered 
to come up to London to see what could be done. 

The story was true enough in one respect, though 
not with respect to Rose. My own brother Stephen 
had got into just a similar scrape, and the narrative 
consequently flowed on easily and smoothly enough. 
Catherine believed it implicitly, all the more readily, 
perhaps, because I cautioned her on no account to 
mention the matter to Lady Surry. 

" She is in great trouble, and does not look at all 
welV^ I finished ; and I should not like her to 
think I had spoken about her and Sir Walter *s con- 
cerns to any ©ne. While she is here I wish you 
would write a line to Joan, and ask her to spend a 
day. She and Lady Surry used to be great friends.^^ 

'^And so were you and she,” remarked Cathe- 
rine. By the change in her tone I felt I had made 
a mistake in saying anything about Joan. You 
were very much in love with her once, were you 
not?” 

I was,” I answered, “ when I was a boy — a long 
time ago — but that was before I ever saw you, Ca- 
therine.” 

I tried to say this tenderly, but I failed. The me- 
mory of my first love was very present with me at 
that moment— my 6rst love, who, in those blessed, 
far-away days, had been to me like child, wife, 
sister, friend — all in one. 


ALL WRONG, 


235 


That night I dreamed a very strange dream. I 
was on the bank of that well-remembered river once 
more, Joan and Rose stood on the little promontory 
of gravel, with hands outstretched towards the bag, 
which floated rapidly away. I tried to arrest its 
progress, but, failing to do so, stepped from the 
stones into the water, and pursued it down the 
stream. Suddenly the water deepened, and at the 
same moment I saw it was Rose herself who was 
being cari ied away by the current. 

Desperately I struck out in pursuit, for I was 
already out of my depth. Panting and gasping, I 
swam on, never able, however, to get near enough to 
catch her dress, which I still beheld gleaming white 
and limp on the bosom of the waters. 

We were in a great river by this time, but there 
was not a boat on its surface, not a creature on its 
banks. I locked if there were no one I could shout 
to — no one who would give me help — and then, see- 
ing there was none to save, I dashed forward with 
fresh energy. 

Even now — after m my, many years — I can recall 
every circumstance o: that dream ; I can feel the 
water licking my, lips — the strain of my muscles as 
my arms clove the water ; I can see the peaceful 
greenness of the bank growing more and more dis- 
tant every moment; I can follow the light figure 
floating on more and more rapidly. I remember the 
mad, passionate despair that rent my very heart — 
the impotent agony of my soul. I make once 
again a final struggle, and through the waters seize 


MV LAST LOVE. 


236 

my darling^s dress ; then there corner a great dark- 
ness before my eyes, as there came in that vision 
— some one unseen before, interposes between us, 
tears Rose’s gown from my grasp, and bears me w ith 
painful strength to the bank, where 1 recognise my 
wife ! 

It does me harm to write about all this. As 
my memory pourtrays once more that scene, I lay 
down my pen, and pace the room. Oh ! Rose — my 
love ! my life ! 

And yet what folly all this is. I recollect think- 
ing just the same thing, thinking it was all sense- 
less foll}^ when, after awaking, trembling and afraid, 
I lay through the hours of that weary night talking 
to my own soul. 

The woman was nothing to me. She had elected 
to marry another husband, and quarrel with him. 
There was no Rose Surry for Tom Luttrell now, 
only Lady Surry — Sir W alter^s wife — my client. 

That this should be so, I resolved — resolved with 
all the strength of my mind — viz., whilst Lady Surry 
stayed with us, home should see less of me even 
than usual. There were certain things it was needful 
for me to do in her interest — certain letters to write, 
certain interviews to seek — above all, I had to find 
Sir Walter Surry; but there existed no necessity 
for me to remain long at home or to return there 
early, and consequently for two days Lady Surry 
and I never met. 

Then she took the extremer step of coming again 
to my chambers ; but this time with Joan — dear. 


ALL WRONG. 


*37 


loving Joan, to whom she had told everything, and 
who proved in this time of need as staunch a friend 
as she had been true a daughter. It was on this oc- 
casion Rose explained how she came to marry Sir 
Walter, as if that mattered to me now or could make 
the present better, the future happier. Afterwards 
we talked about her position. 

I will let Joan know the moment there is news 
of any kind,^^ I said ; but, as they were leaving, I 
held Joan back, and added — For mercy's sake, Joan, 
keep her from me. I cannot bear it. And I cannot 
make her understand." 

'' Dear Tom," Joan answered softly, and the tears 
were in her eyes as she spoke the words. 

What did they find to talk about, my wife and 
Lady Surry ? Doubtless of their children ; and I 
used often to fancy Rose drawing mine to her, and 
fondling and petting them, both because she was a 
mother herself, and because she remembered — and 
then I was wont to grow hard and angry in a mo- 
ment when this softening picture was turned and the 
canvas reversed — when I saw her in imagination look- 
ing for something in my children which they lacked 
— searching their mother's face for qualities she in- 
stinctively desired to find, but could not, and then 
turning for comfort to Joan — the tender, brave, im- 
pulsive self-reliant Joan of old. 

When a man has made a mistake in the building 
of his life's house, he is never so disappointed with 
his own want of skill as with the house itself. 

That was my case in those few short days, which 


238 


MY LAST LOVE. 


seemed 'to lengthen themselves out into years. 
Heaven pardon me ! 

But what else did those two women talk about ? 
I have since ascertained that Catherine devoted some 
portion of that abundant leisure with which Provi- 
dence had blessed her to cross-examining Rose, as 
she cross-examined me, but with much greater 
success. 

Rose was but a poor dissembler, and ere long my 
Catherine knew she had never been to the great town 
house at all, and that she had come to my chambers 
on that winter’s night, when I was supposed to have 
been ceremoniously invited to an interview — all of 
which incongruities Mrs. Luttrell kept sacredly and 
secretly within her own breast, as within a store- 
house, wherefrom, when the evil days came, coals of 
fire were to be heaped on the head of an offending 
husband. 

No human being would believe the trouble I had 
to ascertain Sir Walter Surry’s whereabouts. 

Subsequently I have reason to know this was at- 
tributed to me as a sin, Mrs. Luttrell arguing, with 
the usual logical accuracy of her sex, that if I had 
wanted to find him I could have done so ; but this 
was not the case. For some time he had led so wan- 
dering a life, that not even his most intimate friends 
could indicate his whereabouts with certainty, and 
it was therefore necessary for me to track him down 
step by step, which at length I did. 

Even then, however, I could not immediately start 
in pursuit, for I had been retained on an important 


ALL WRONG, 


239 


case, and even for Rose I could not throw up my 
brief and desert a cause I had made my own, and 
which I ultimately won. 

Women say a man never truly loves them unless 
he be willing to do anything for their dear sakes — 
and I fancy the women are right. That individual 
who observed — 

** I oonld not love thee, dear, so much, 

Loved I not honour more,” 

never certainly had fallen over head and ears. 

In the days when Rose was still my possible 
Rose, I should like to have seen the retainer that 
could have kept me from her side ; but now, alas I 
Rose was not even possibly my Rose, and rent and 
taxes, tradespeople and Her Majesty’s tax-collector, 
had to be satisfied as well as my client’s interest 
served. 

Heavens ! what a life this would be if it could 
always be only apple-blossoms and Rose; but then, 
alas ! both Rose and apple-blossoms are expensive 
— the one involves an establishment, and the other 
a gardener. 

Ylhy — oh ! why did Adam and Eve leave Eden ? 
Was it that Eve wanted to see the latest fashion- 
book, and that Adam disliked the trouble of gather- 
ing peas for dinner, and fruit for dessert ? 

If only there could be a second garden of Eden 
planted, say in the Thames Valley, or on the top oi 
Richmond Hill, I think I might promise to refrain 


240 


MY LAST LOVE. 


from any dozen trees the owner of that freehold 
desired to keep intact. 

There is an observation, however, I desire to add. 

Should any one reading these lines be tempted to 
present me with the like, I should prefer Paradise, 
without any Eve who could now be brought to 
me. 

Alas ! that we should outlive our illusions. I 
think as little of women at this present moment as 
I daresay most women who understand the world 
think of men — that is to say, we may get on com- 
fortably enough without the grand passions, the 
profound despair, the mad agony, the rapturous joy 
we once thought necessary to make up the whole 
romance of life. 

For, behold, life is not a romance, but a reality — 
full of such stern sorrows, such bitter tragedies, as 
might make the ringlets of romance itself fall Out 
of curl. 

But all this time Rose and her affairs are waiting. 

The moment I had finished my speech in the 
case to which allusion has already been made, with- 
out waiting even to hear the verdict, I left the 
court, repaired to my chambers, divested myself of 
wig and gown, put on a top-coat, directed my clerk 
to telegraph result of the trial to me, took a cab to 
Euston Square, and was soon on my way to Crom- 
ingford. 

I ascertained Sir Walter had returned to Gray- 
borough almost directly after his wife left, and 
knowing of how little use letters are in explaining 


ALL WRONG, 


241 


away, or smoothing down conjugal differences, it 
was my intention to seek a face to face interview, 
and beard the lion in his den. 

Since the time when I went down to claim my 
bride, and found her married, I had never been in 
that part of the country at all, and as I strode 
along the remembered roads it seemed impossible 
to realise the free, happy life I once led, wander- 
ing by. the mill stream, and parting the hedges to 
find out the blue-bonnet^s nest. 

It seemed to me still more strange to recollect 
that people like the Surrys had then appeared 
people almost too great and grand to approach — 
that the then Lady Surry, now a dowager, had been 
able to snub me very effectually, and that even 
their butler, sedate and white neck-clothed, inspired 
me with a very sufficient awe. 

As for Grayborough, time was when I should 
have entered its gates with fear and trembling, and 
scarcely dared to ask for an interview with its owner, 
but now so assured and confident were my manners, 
that the old woman at the lodge dropped me a re- 
spectful curtsy, and the footman who graciously 
received my card was almost deferential in his re- 
ception. 

In those remote regions it could not be that 
anyone knew aught concerning me, but I knew 
myself that I had made a certain mark in law and 
in letters, and this was sufficient both for myself and 
for other people. 

How Sir Walter might take my visit was of 


242 


MY LAST LOVL, 


course quite another matter. If he refused to see 
me, I intended to return to mine inn, and send 
him thence an explanatory epistle j if he refused 
to read that, I resolved upon adopting another 
course. But the baronet saved me the trouble of 
resorting to either plan by walking, high and 
mighty, proud and conscious, stately and unbend- 
ing, into the library where I sat. 

I rose as he entered, and we bowed — we two 
stiffly bowed to each other — then he motioned me 
to resume my seat, and throwing himself into an 
easy chair, inquired, 

To what fortunate circumstances am I to attri- 
bute the honour of this visit, Mr. Luttrell V* 

He laid such a stress on the li^st two words, that 
I knew in a moment that he had neither forgotten 
nor forgiven me. 

come here on behalf of your wife. Sir Walter, 

I replied, calmly. 

"I suspected as much,^^ he said, and his face 
(lushed, and his eyes sparkled. I can hear no- 
thing on, I can brook no interference in, the 
uiatter.^^ 

“ Pardon me. Sir Walter, but you must,'^ I re- 
torted. “ I am here as Lady Surry^s next friend 
— not as her legal adviser — I am here as her father 
might be were he living, or as her brother, if she 
possessed one, to try to put a wrong right between 
you.” 

It is impossible,^^ he answered. Nothing can 
ever be right between us again ; she has left her 


ALL WRONC, 


^43 

home of her own accord, and she shall never enter 
these doors more !” 

You are quit^^ sure of that I said. 

" As sure as that I . am standing here,” he re- 
plied. 

He had risen in his excitement, and was standing 
beside the library table, with his clenched hand 
resting upon it. 

Pray do not agitate yourself — sit down,” I 
suggested. It was a cool thing to say to a man in 
his own house, but he did as I bade him, and re- 
sumed his seat. I have no wish to proceed to 
extreme measures at present,” I went on. I have 
come down from London to talk the matter over 
with you quietly man to man.” ‘ . 

I have told you already I will not discuss it,” 
he said. 

And I have told you that I mean you to hear 
me. -Of course,” I went on, hurriedly, have 
only listened to one side of the story — that related 
by Lady Surry — but so far as I understood, there 
cannot be a question of her entire innocence.” 

The question of her guilt or innocence is one 
which shall never be entered upon privately or pub- 
licly by me,” he answered. She has left her 
home, she has virtually ceased to be my wife, and 
she can never in the future be more to me than she 
is at this moment.” 

''You think it then fair to condemn a woman 
upon mere suspicion ?” 

" Suspicion, sir I have I not ample proof?” 


244 


MV LAST LOyE. 


" I think not/^ was my answer. " You have not 
a tittle of evidence which you could take before 
any judge or jury in the land.” 

never intend to take it before judge or 
jury,” he exclaimed. 

Possibly not, but she may, and it is to avert 
so terrible a calamity that I am now here.^^ 

I said this very slowly and deliberately, and I 
could see it produced its impression. Sir Walter 
had looked at the matter hitherto entirely from one 
point of view — his own — the idea of Rose taking 
any action had evidently never occurred to him, and 
he sat thinking over my words, whilst I went on. 

You have condemned an innocent and helpless 
woman on mere suspicion, you separated her from 
her children without a shadow of real proof against 
her, you have done what you never dare have done 
had she owned a single male relative ” 

Stop !” exclaimed the baronet. I cannot allow 
assertions such as these to pass uncontradicted. I 
had ample reason for the course I adopted. Even 
licr own mother says I have not been unduly harsh.” 

Sir Walter Surry,” I replied, before you ever 
l)eheld your wife's mother, I was well acquainted with 
her, and considering the extent of our mutual know- 
ledge, you are not, I presume, going to take shelter 
behind her petticoats. She never cared for her 
daughter, she never gave her love or tenderness, and 
she sides with you now not only because you are the 
stronger power, but because she is, and has always 
been, jealous of her daughter, and desired to secure 


ALL WRONG. 


245 


for herself the man who has been the cause of 
all this unhappiness between yourself and your 
wife/' 

Your authority for this ?" he inquired. 

'^Nay, your authority rather for vile and wicked 
calumnies against your wife, who has never wronged 
you in thought or word or deed, but whom you drove 
from your home, to seek the advice of the only true 
friend she possessed in all the earth." 

It is perhaps as well to be accurate," retorted 
Sir Walter, with an angry sneer. It does not ap- 
pear to me that you have exactly described your 
position." 

^'I do not know what system of morals may ob- 
tain in your rank," I replied, hotly, for his tone 
was as insulting as his meaning was offensive, ''but 
in mine, when a man marries it is thought only de- 
cent that if ever he have been the lover of another 
woman, he should try to forget the fact. My feel- 
ing towards Lady Surry now is as pure as it was when 
I carried her home a child to her father's house. 
What the loss of her was to me, neither you nor any 
other human being can even imagine — how it changed 
me and my life no one may ever know — but I did 
not come here to talk about myself. I have come to 
say you have committed a great wrong, which you 
must and shall set right." 

He did not take this speech angrily, as might have 
been expected ; he sat silent for a minute, and then, 
careful not to lose my advantage, I went on. I told 
him how I had seen the man the cause of all this 


246 


MY LAST LOVE. 


unhappiness riding years before with Rose, how she 
had left him to come and speak to me, how I had 
since questioned her about the events of that time, 
and elicited that he had then proposed and been re- 
jected. I afterwards proceeded to relate how I had 
sought him in London, and entreated him to ex- 
plain the reason which could possibly have em- 
boldened him to address the letters to Lady Surry 
which excited her husband's ire. I prayed of him if 
he had preserved any of her notes to let me see 
them. 

"I have every line in my pocket, Sir Walter, she 
ever wrote to him," I finished. “ No human being 
could extract consciousness of guilt out of them. 
She was foolish and frightened, and even imprudent, 
I admit, but remember it was your own neglect which 
laid her open to his importunities. Even had Lady 
Surry gone off with him, there is no one who, know- 
ing all the circumstances, could say otherwise than 
that the fault lay with you. Will you read those 
letters ?" 

I will not," he said. My mind is quite made 
up about the matter. You have probably meant 
well in coming here, but you might have saved 
yourself the trouble. My wife shall never return 
here." 

Is that your final answer ?" I asked. 

^^It is my final answer," he repeated. " I will 
never live with a woman who has been even talked 
about. Had she ever cared for me, ever loved me, 
ever married me for anything but wealth and 


ALL WRONG, 


247 


position, this thing could not have happened. No 
man would have dared to insult her with his 
love.” 

'' I will leave these letters with you,” I said, more 
shaken by his words and manner than I should then 
have cared to acknowledge. '' Whether you read or 
not, I trust to your honour to return them. I pro- 
cured them with infinite difficulty, and it was not till 
I made Mr. Lovell Allen understand / intended Lady 
Surry should for the future be protected from him, 
and that she should be put right with the world, if 
not with you, that he gave way. I had another in- 
direct hold over him, too, or perhaps he might not 
have proved so docile ; but at all events there are her 
letters, and if you take my advice you will read them 
carefully. 

Keep them and your advice also, sir,^^ he an- 
swered. 

“You positively refuse then to do justice to Lady 
Surry ?” I said, rising. 

“ I have done her full and sufficient justice,^^ he 
replied. 

“ If that be your belief,^^ I remarked, “ it will then 
become my duty to counsel Lady Surry to seek the 
advice of some respectable solicitor, and to take what- 
ever steps he may recommend for the purpose of 
re-establishing her position.** 

“ You intend then to constitute yourself the chaii.- 
pion of a married woman,** he said with a sneej 
which proved my last threat had taken effect. ' “ J 
ifl a thankless and a dangerous office. As you haw 


248 


MV LAST LOVE, 


p'iven me so much valuable advice, let me return 
the compliment by saying I should recommend you 
not to meddle in afl’airs that in no way concern 
you" 

I turned to leave the room sick at heart — I had 
done my best, and my best had failed — I thought of 
the sweet, pitiful yearning face. I marvelled how I 
was ever to tell her, how merciless and stony he had 
proved. There did not seem another word of argu- 
ment at my disposal, I could only say to him just 
what I felt, and I said it. 

God help any married woman whose husband 
turns against her — for she is more lonely than a 
widow. I marvel. Sir Walter, how you dared marry 
a mere child like that, meaning to take no better 
care of her than you have done. Hers has been 
a wretched lot — mother and husband alike cruel 
and neglectful. When I think of her as I first saw 
her, a lonely delicate little creature, in terror of a 
I arsh mother, and when I think of her as I saw 
her in my chambers in London, a still more deso- 
late woman, weeping over your cruel injustice, I feel 
a pity for her I could not speak, and an indigna- 
tion against you I could not express." 

And with that confession of faith, as there was 
nothing more to be gained by civility or diplomacy, 
I left the room, Sir Walter ceremoniously opening 
the door for me to pass out, and bowing haughtily 
in answer to my curt leave-taking. 

The footman preceded me through the hall, and 
with a ceremony equal to that of his master, opened 


ALL WRONG 


249 


the front door to afford me egress. I walked down 
the avenue, I passed through the entrance gates, 
where the lodge-keeper curtsied to me as before. 
I walked straight back to the inn, where I hastily 
swallowed some cold meat and bread whilst a gig 
was being got ready to take me to the station ; 
then buttoning up my coat and taking my travel- 
ling rug, I drove off, the well-remembered land- 
scape stretching away in the distance, sweet and 
peaceful as of old, wdth as sad a heart as I had 
carried in my breast for many and many a long 
day. 

When I arrived at the station, the first person I 
saw was Sir Walter Surry, mounted on a magnifi- 
cent black steed that stood pawing with its feet 
and champing at the bit, anxious apparently to be 
off again, though it was evident he had been ridden 
to the station at no gentle pace. 

One word with you, Mr. Luttrell, if you 
please,^' said Sir Walter, and as I jumped from the 
gig he alighted from his horse. 

'^You may as well leave me those letters you 
spoke of; you shall receive them back again quite 
safely.” 

I could have uttered a shout of joy at hearing 
this, for I knew he was relenting, but I was careful 
not to betray my feelings; so without a word I 
handed him the packet, raised my hat, and hurried 
on to the platform just in time to secure a com- 
fortable seat with my back to the engine, a matter 
1 am very particular about. 


*7 


250 


MV LAST LOVE. 


It is marvellous how careful we become of our 
bodies, when all the hope and love and freshness 
that made existence so bright to us has departed 
just like Lifers young dream/^ 


CHAPTER ■ vnr. 


RECONCILED. 

I TRAVELLED back to town a very happy 
man. I was not afraid now of meeting Rose, 
for though there was no positive good news to re- 
port, at least the tidings I could now bear were 
hopeful. It all, however, went to prove that a raan^s 
deliberate words very often avail very little, that it 
is generally the arrow shot at a venture which hits 
the mark, after a careful aim has failed. It was 
the chance sentence I had spoken in my pain and 
my anger which pierced Walter Surry's coat of 
mail, which penetrated his vanity and his pride, and 
made him remember that after all there might 
be another side to the question which it was his 
duty to look at. She was the mother of his chil- 
dren, the wife of his choice, and I felt satisfied 
that although he might not relent at once, he 
would relent in time, and taking Rose back, make 
her a more careful, tender, loving husband than had 
ever been the case before. 


252 


MV LAST LOVE. 


On my return to town, I intended also to have a 
serious conversation with Rose herself, to point 
out the mistakes she had made, to induce her to 
strive in the future better to comprehend her hus- 
band's nature. I doubted the chances of my success, 
but I thought if she would listen to advice from 
anyone she would from me, and strive to follow it; 
at all events, I meant to try. So I spent most 
part of the journey considering what I wanted to 
say and how I had best say it — most of all how I 
could induce her to write such a letter to Sir 
Walter as might touch his heart and induce him to 
believe she was not so entirely indifferent to her 
husband as she was devoted to her children. 

By the time I reached Euston Square it was 
late, and the streets as I drove through them to 
my chambers looked cheerless and sloppy. A drizz- 
ling rain was falling; the few people who were 
abroad hurried along with umbrellas up, tlie air 
was misty and heavy and dull, and a depression for 
which I could in no way account, seeing that busy 
men are not usually much affected by external in- 
fluences, took possession of me. 

I tried to cheer myself by thinking of the com- 
paratively good news 1 should be able to communi- 
cate. I pictured the sweet smile that would thank 
me, the grateful eyes lifted for a moment to mine, 
and then I understood what was the matter with 
me, that the jade Memory was at her tricks again, 
and that it behoved me to be very very careful of 
my own soul, lest for one moment I should forget 


RECONCILED. 253 

Rose was Lady Surry, and I Catherine LuttrelPs 
husband. 

Oh ! my dear, I loved you first and I loved 
you last with a passion no one but myself can even 
imagine, but I thank God now to remember that 
through all that time, which was a time of struggle 
and anguish to me, when you trusted your future, 
your fair fame, and yourself in my care, I never 
held your hand, or looked in your changed face 
with a thought I should have minded the angels 
recording in the Eternal Books. 

It would soon be over, however, I hoped — the 
ordeal ; the weary self-restraint ; the continual 
temptation to forget, to believe the time of our 
enforced separation a dream, and that we might still 
be more to one another than we had been in the 
happy years gone by. 

Honestly I had served her, in all honour I had 
held aloof from her. She came to me as to her 
only friend, and as a friend I worked for her. 

What if I could not quite forget? if I felt it 
needful to keep out of her way ? ah ! my reader, I 
was only flesh and blood, and I had loved this 
woman once with a love which I knew could never 
die. 

When I got out of the cab the rain was still fall- 
ing, so I bade the man wait for me, as I merely 
intended calling at my chambers to inquire what 
letters there might be lying there ere hurrying 
home. 

Since Lady Surry came to me J had worked later 


254 


MY LAST LOVE, 


than '^ver in Pump Court, but I meant to reach 
home on this particular night before she retired to 
her room, so as to tell her the result of my jour- 
^ey. 

Full of this design, I hurried into Pump Court, 
and so up some stone steps to the door of the house 
where were my chambers. 

It was wide open, and, to my amazement, I saw 
Joan standing in the hall talking to the house- 
keeper. 

Oh, here is Mr. Luttrell !” exclaimed the latter, 
who stood facing the court, and consequently beheld 
my entrance. 

'' Tom, I am so thankful you have come back,^^ 
Joan said, laying an emphasis on the thankful, 
which filled me with an indescribable alarm. 

“What is it?” I asked — “my father ” 

“ No, there is no one dead,” she said, answering 
my unfinished sentence and my unspoken thought. 
“ Let us go upstairs for a moment, and I will tell 
you why I am here,” and she led the way to my 
room, where a fire was burning, and the lamp 
already lighted. 

Joan closed the door, and then came close beside 
me. There was a look in her face that made me 
tremble, though I could not have told what I 
dreaded. 

“Before I say a word,” she began, “you must 
promise not to be angry.” 

“ Do not be foolish, Joan,” I answered ; “ tell me 
in one word what is wrong.” 


RECONCILED. 


ass 

" Promise me/^ she insisted. 

Well, I promise — go on.^^ 

"The fact is, Tom/^ she hesitated, and then 
proceeded — " somehow Catherine has ascertained it 
is not all right between Sir Walter and Rose. 
Some kind friend has been making her believe 
there is going to be a divorce, and all sorts of 

things — and 

Finish, Joan,^^ I said. 

" Not whilst you look like that,^' Joan retorted. 

" Look like what V* I answered guiltily, and, 
making a desperate effort, 1 hid the demon that I 
knew was glaring out of my face. 

" Well, you know it was natural/^ Joan resumed, 
" Catherine thought we had all been deceiving her, 
and she could not quite forget how fond you used 
to be of Rose — and some one must have been advis- 
ing her badly, for ” 

" If you do not finish, Joan, you will send me 
insane,” I said. "What has Catherine said or done 
.that should bring you here at this time of the 
night 

" Oh ! Tom, you must not be angry — but she 
said Rose and she could not stay in the same house 
any longer, and so Rose and I have left.” 

" And where is Rose ?” 

" She is waiting for me in a cab in Essex Street ; 
it was too late to come down Middle Lane.” 

"Come along, Joan,” I cried, turning towards 
the door, and my voice sounded to myself hoarse 
and changed as I spoke. 


256 


MV LAST LOVE. 


What do you mean to do ?” Joan asked. 

See whether Mrs. Luttrell will refuse to receive 
any person I choose to take to my house. Rose 
shall stay there, by ” 

But Joan covered my mouth with her hand. 

^^Tom/^ she began, hanging on my arm, and 
hindering my progress from the room, listen to 
me. If you take Rose back there you will kill her 
— do you understand me ? — kill her 1 She is not 
strong enough to endure a scene ; she is quite ex- 
hausted now with driving for so many hours. The 
best thing we can do is to take her to some hotel 
for the night, and get quiet lodgings to-morrow. 
We have been going about all the evening trying to 
get apartments, for I knew you did not want her to 
go to an hotel ; but I could not find a suitable 
place where they would take us in on the instant. 
Oh ! Tom, do not be angry, but think what is best 
for Rose ; do not think of anybody but her ; if you 
do, you will only be making bad worse. Where 
had we better take her ? she is perfectly worn out. • 
Your housekeeper told me about some lodgings in 
Norfolk Street, but she does not know whether 
they are vacant.^^ 

“ Let us go back to Rose, and I will see what 
can be done,” I answered, and Joan, wrapping her 
shawl closely about her, ran down the stairs and out 
into the drizzling rain. 

I felt like one crazed as L followed her. To think 
of Rose being driven forth like this — driven forth 
with contumely — driven forth from my house by my 


RECONCILED, 


257 


wife I I do not know what I said in my despair — 
I only remember Joan bidding me hush — I only 
remember staggering through the night, through the 
courts and passages of the Temple, like one drunk, 
and reaching the door of the cab, where she sat hud- 
dled up in one corner, crying like a child. 

" Why did you not take her to Southgate ?” I 
asked Joan, savagely. 

“ Because she would not go,” Joan answered, 
and Rose moaned out that she could not take her- 
self and her troubles into any person’s house again. 

I went and secured the lodgings mentioned by 
my housekeeper, and then brought Rose and Joan 
to them. W^hen I assisted the former to alight, 
however, she fainted away in my arms, and I carried 
her up to the dreary sitting-room, where the maid- 
of- all- work was striving to kindle a fire. 

I never beheld anything in all my life which 
impressed me with such a sense of utter desolation 
and ihisery as that scene — the cold, cheerless room, 
the untidy servant, the dim light provided by a 
couple of composite candles, the dark bed-chamber 
revealed through folding-doors that stood partly 
open, Joan and the landlady trying to bring Rose 

what the latter called to.” Oh I merciful 

Providence ! will the events of that night ever fade 
from my recollection ? shall I ever forget the devil 
which stirred within me at the sight ? 

“ Tom,” Joan said at last, you had better go for 
a doctor.” 

And I went. 


258 


MV LAST LOVE. 


Ey the time I returned — it was a long time, for 
not a medical man I called upon was at home — 
they had undressed Rose, and got her into bed ; and 
whilst I sat in the front room, the doctor went in 
to see her, and I waited in an agony of terror till 
he should return and give me his report. 

I do not think you need be uneasy, sir,^^ he 
said, when he had creaked slowly and solemnly back 
to where I stood. Your good lady is very delicate 
— very.^^ 

How I hated the man, even whilst I mentally 
1 'essed him. 

The lady is not my wife, doctor,^’ I inter- 
rupted; but I have known her since she was a 
child, and my sister will remain with her here till 
she is strong enough to be removed.^^ 

I said all this quite steadily, for I was determined 
there should be no misconception on the part of 
anybody as to the relation in which we stood. 

But she is married ?” the doctor questioned. 

Yes — her husband is not in London though at 
present. Should you, however, consider her case at 
all serious, I will telegraph for him.^^ 

There is no immediate danger,” he answered, 
thoughtfully; ‘'she is certainly very delicate, but 
still, with care and nourishment — I can tell better 
in the morning,” he hurried on — “ I will write a 
prescription now, if you favour me with pen and 
ink. Pray what is the name of my patient ?” 

For one second I hesitated, then said, distinctly — 
'' Lady Surry.” 


reconciled. 


259 


I beg your pardon/* he remarked, politely 
Lady Surry,” I repeated still more distinctly ; 
then, perceiving he could not quite understand me, 
I added — “Wife to Sir Walter Surry, of Gray- 
borough.” 

He did not make a remark after this, he only 
wrote out his prescription, pocketed his fee, and 
departed. Clearly a discreet man, who, though he 
comprehended there was a mystery, did not think 
it his duty to inquire further into it. 

After he was gone, Joan came to me. Rose was, 
she said, better. I need not be unhappy. Had I 
any news ? 

“ Yes,” I answered ; “ I had seen Sir Walter, and 
thought he would ultimately relent.” 

That will be a tonic for her in itself,” Joan ex- 
claimed j “and now, dear Tom, I want to say om* 
single word to you before you go home.” 

“I am not going home to-night,” I answered. 
“ I wrll get this prescription made up, leave it here, 
and then return to Pump Court. I shall be round 
early in the morning to know how Rose has rested. *' 

“ But, Tom, what does this mean ?” 

“ That I am going to stay for the night in Pump 
Court — and that reminds me the cab which brought 
me from the station has been waiting for a couple 
of hours in Fleet Street. I must go and dismiss 
it.” 

“ Tom ” she put a hand on each shoulder, and 
looked steadily into my face. 

“ Yes, Joan.” 


26 o 


MY LAST LOVE. 


Yoti are not going to quarrel with your wife?^^ 

" You should never interfere between man and 
wife, Joan ; what I choose to do, or leave undone, 
that I shall do, or not do, you may depend upon 
it/" 

On the whole it is perhaps as well you should 
not return home to-night.” 

I am surely the best judge of that."" 

Ah ! Tom, for the sake of dear old times do 
not talk in that cold, short, cynical way. It will 
not make things a bit better, and it makes you — 
oh ! ever so much worse."" 

And then she fell to crying, and I kissed and 
.)ade her hold her peace. 

Next morning the report was that Rose had rested 
tolerably ; but the doctor said she had caught cold, 
and must be kept very quiet ; and so she went on 
or some days, sometimes staying in her bed, some- 
times lying on the sofa, but always remaining very 
delicate and weakly, and still there came no letter 
from Sir Walter Surry, although she at my earnest 
entreaty had written to him. 

At the end of that time Joan sent for furfclier 
advice, which came in a natty brougham, and 
assumed the shape of a portly gentleman, who 
carried an immense watch, and treated Doctor 
Snelling with exaggerated respect, insisting on his 
going first, and listening to all he had to say with an 
air of intensest interest. 

When they had consulted together, and seen the 
patient once more, and the great man had written 


RECONCILED, 


261 


Out his prescription and pocketed his fee, I waylaid 
him on the way to his brougham, and asked his real 
opinion of Rose. 

For if there be any actual danger,” I sug- 
gested, I must telegraph for her husband.” 

The portly gentleman stood still on the pavement, 
and looked at me from head to foot, as though there 
were something singular about my humanity which 
it would please him to anatomize ; then he said — 

If there be any actual danger — my dear sir, the 
lady^s life is not worth a month’s purchase. She is 
dying at this moment as fast as she knows how. 
God bless the man — why what are you to her ?” 

I do not remember much about that day. I 
telegraphed to Sir Walter Surry — I went into 
Court ; but I cannot recollect what I said ; it was 
all right, though, I suppose, as no complaint of 
carelessness ever reached my ears. I went back to 
my chambers after Court, and found Sir Walter 
Surry there before me. 

When he asked about her, I inquired what it sig- 
nified to him. He had been doubtful, I felt, as to 
whether the whole thing were not a ruse ; but when 
he beheld me standing looking at the fire — which I 
could not see clearly — he understood there was no 
deception — that my Rose — mine through all — was 
gliding swiftly away. 

What is the matter, what was the cause of it ?” 
he asked at length. 

Do not ask me,” I said, " my heart is broken.” 
And I verily believe it did break when that portly 


262 


MY LAST LOVE, 


gentleman told me in the sullen gloom of a winter^s 
morning that she was dying as fast as she knew 
how. 

For I could not disguise from myself the fact 
that my wife had killed her — that the fragile plant, 
which might liave been tended and fostered back 
to health, was unable to bear the exposure and 
fatigue of that weary winter’s evening. I ought 
never to have taken her to my home — never told 
Catherine falsehoods about her — never put it in the 
power of a cold, merciless woman to speak to Rose 
as I knew' she had been spoken to — never left her 
to be thrust out from warmth and shelter into the 
drizzling rain and the gathering night, as though 
she had been the vilest of her sex. 

Heaven forgive me ! — I hated my wife then, and 
I made a vow that the same roof should never cover 
the twain of us again for any longer period than 
it would require to make the final arrangements I 
intended. 

After a short time we — Sir Walter and I — went 
round into Norfolk Street, where Rose, wrapped in 
shawls, was lying on a sofa drawn close up to the 
fire. 

He did not wish her to be told of his arrival, or 
prepared for his appearance, so we walked straight 
up together into the drawing-room, where the 
servant said we should find her. 

He never asked if she were better or worse, and 
the only sign of anxiety I could trace in his manner 
was an involuntary pause ere he turned the handle 


RECONCILED. 


263 


of the door. For a moment he seemed half-afraid 
of entering, then, collecting his courage, he crossed 
the threshold. 

As he did so. Rose languidly raised her head, 
then almost shrieking out Walter,” stretched her 
arms towards him. 

That was enough ; the past with its fear and its 
suspicion fled away on the instant, and they were 
once more all they had ever been to one another, 
that, and perhaps a little more ; he was kneeling by 
her side in an instant, kissing her, and sobbing 
out — 

“ Oh ! Rose, my poor darling !” 

Then Joan and I retreated from the apartment, 
and left the husband and wife alone together. 


CONCLUSION. 


I T was the most natural thing in the world that 
Sir Walter should desire Lady Surry’s im- 
mediate removal to his own home ; and it pleased 
me to see that, whereas a week previously he had 
declared she should never return to his home, he 
was now almost mad with anxiety to get her there 
—not indeed to Grayborough, for that was im- 
possible — but back to his town house. 

At first 1 urged him not to attempt taking her 
away until the morning, but Joan advanced so 
many reasons why it would be better for the removal 
to occur in the evening than at noon, that we at 
length despatched a messenger to the housekeeper, 
bidding her have all things in readiness, whilst I 
went out and hired the most comfortable brougham 
I could find to convey her to her husband^s house. 

When everything was ready, Joan enveloped 
Rose in wraps, and I stood aside for Sir Walter to 
carry her downstairs ; but, to my astonishment, he 
drew back. 


CONCLUSION, 


265 


" Luttrell/^ he said, laying his hand on my arm, 

I seem to have no strength left, I cannot do it. 
Will you 

I did not answer. I only took up the light bur- 
den, and bore it to the carriage, where my sister 
placed pillows under her head, and placed her feet 
on the opposite seat, and folded the shawls and rugs 
over her tenderly. 

After this Joan and I stepped aside, feeling 
our part was done, — that we had given up Rose to 
the only person who possessed a rightful claim to 
her; but Sir Walter, turning to me and my sister, 
said — 

You will come with us — oh I Miss Luttrell, do 
not leave her yet 1” 

If you wish it,” I answered, ** we will come, 
but not with you.” 

So Joan and I walked up together into the 
Strand, where I hailed a cab, and bade the man 
drive as fast as he could to Sir Walter Surry’s 
house. 

We arrived there some minutes before the brough- 
am, and Joan, telling the housekeeper who she 
was, went up to see that Lady Surry’s room had 
been prepared for her, whilst I remained in the 
dining-room waiting their arrivah 

There had been a time when I never thought to 
stand in Walter Surry’s house with his or my own 
goodwill, but with the shadow of death stealing on 
towards that stately mansion it was no time to re- 
vive old feuds, to cherish mortal hatred. He had 

18 


266 


MV LAST LOVE. 


taken her from me, but there was one mightier than 
man coming to take her from him, and my soul was 
so full of pity for the grief and remorse I beheld 
written on his face that it could not remember my 
own desolate life, or the heart which his theft had 
left empty for ever. 

When the carriage arrived, without asking him 
whether I should or should not, I lifted Rose out 
as gently and tenderly as I could, and merely ask- 
ing him to show me the way, carried her up the 
wide staircase and along a corridor, where my feet 
sank noiseless into the thick soft carpet, to her 
room. 

She had fainted again, and I laid her down upon 
a couch, whilst the doctor, who had been already 
summoned, bustled up to her side and commenced 
applying restoratives. My part was done, the need 
for me existed no longer, so I walked to the door- 
way, and then paused and looked back. They had 
thrown aside the light shawl which enveloped her 
head, and her long hair rippled over her shoulders 
and fell in waves of silken softness almost to the 
ground. Her face was white as that of a corpse, 
and the blue-veined eyelids were closed upon the 
sweet pleading eyes. One thin hand drooped over 
the side of the couch. There was death in every 
line of her face, in the very outline of her figure, 
and unable to help myself I strode back to where 
she lay, and taking her hand, pressed it to my lips 
and heart, while she remained unconscious of me 
or my madness. ‘ 


CONCLUSION. 


267 


Then I left the room and her — it was the last 
time, living or dead, I ever beheld the face of Rose 
Surry, 

Down the staircase Sir Walter followed me. 
Pausing at the dining-room door I asked him to 
favour me with a moments private conversation, 
and when he entered the apartment I said, 

** Do you wish my sister to remain here, or can 
she return with me now 

^^If she could remain,*' he answered, "oh, if 
only she could remain !" 

" She shall do so if you desire it,” I replied ; 
" but if she stay I must stay until the arrival of 
Lady Surry's mother.” 

" Her mother may see Rose if she wish,” answered 
Sir Walter, " but she shall never remain here.” 

" Then it will be impossible for my sister to do 
so,” I said. "We are not low enough in rank for 
her to remain here exactly a a servant, and we are 
not high 'enough to stand above the world's 
opinion.” 

" Luttrell, do not be hard upon me,” he an- 
swered, and I then knew I Had been a little bitter in 
my humility ; " do not leave me alone in my trouble, 
there is no man living I should so earnestly desire 
to call friend as yourself, and as for Rose, I know 
there is no woman she would so much desire to have 
with her as your sister.” 

" In that case,” I said, " I will, with your per- 
mission, send for my mother, and she can remain 
here till ” 


268 


MV LAST LOVE. 


There was no need for me to finish that sentence; 
we both knew there could but be one possible end- 
ing to it. 

Over this part of my story 1 will linger no longer. 

Next day my mother arrived, and I went back to 
my chambers and my work. 

With regard to Catherine, I had not yet seen her. 
I did not mean to see her till all was over, and 
though Mr. Sherlock came and Mrs. Sherlock 
wrote, persuading me to go home, I gave both but 
one stereotyped answer, Not yet.” 

I could not forgive her ; I meant never to forgive 
her. I did not tell ^Ir. Sherlock Rose was dying, 
and reconciled to her husband — that her children 
had been given back to her to hold till death claimed 
her. I only remained obstinately firm. ^'Not 
yet,” I said, and Mr. Sherlock went away marvelling 
exceedingly. 

Before that month expired she was dead. One 
morning Sir Walter entered my chambers, and I 
knew by his face what had happened. 

Should you like to see her?” he asked. During 
her illness he had often asked me the same ques- 
tion, and I had always answered him ^^No.” I 
answered him ^^No now. 

“ You will come to the funeral, though,^^ he said ; 
but I shook my head. 

Is there never to be peace between us V* he 
asked. 

I trust there will never be war,” I answered, 
and there never has been. 


CONCLUSION. 


269 


That night I went into my own house, and found 
Catherine dressed out for a party. She received me 
as a criminal, heaping reproaches on my head, 
exhausting her feminine vocabulary for phrases suit- 
able to describe the enormity of my crimes. I 
had brought the good-for-nothing woman there 
simply to have opportunity of making love to her ; 
I had laid out a deliberate scheme of wickedness 
and villany. 

^'Your sister, whom I always disliked and dis- 
trusted,^^ continued Catherine, " aided and abetted 
your deception. I suppose you thought because 
she was Lady Surry I should bear it. Lady 
indeed ! Had I my will I know what I should do 
with her and such as her ; and as for you, sir, I 
wonder at your daring to return home in this 
manner to me, after the weeks in which you have 
no doubt been living with that wretch.” 

'^Have you quite finished your instructive dis- 
course?” I inquired when at length she paused, 
literally because, I think, she had not another word 
to say, for if you have there is one question 1 
should like to ask you.” 

What is it 

' ^^You hated Lady Surry very much, you were 
very jealous of her, were you not ?” 

'^And with reason,^^ she retorted, "with good 
and sufficient reason.'^ 

You will be glad, then, to know that she is 
dead,— that she died at half-past eight this morning, 
— that her husband, who is almost distracted. 


270 


MY LAST LOVE. 


brought me this news, — and that I have come here 
to-night merely to say your senseless jealousy, your 
pitiless cruelty, killed her/^ 

With that I rose to leave the room, but Catherine 
rushed after me. “ It is not true ; it cannot be 
true,” she almost shrieked. She was delicate, but 
not 

'' She is dead,” I repeated, " and I will never for- 
give you — never j I renounce you this night. From 
this hour 1 have no wife and you no husband.” 

She caught my arm, but I shook her off; she 
seized my coat, but I pulled it out of her grasp. It 
was hard for her, I see it all now, but I had not 
a thought then save for Rose thrust out from my 
house with bitter words and bitterer innuendos. I 
had not even a corner in my heart for the wife 
who, fancying herself wronged, had cast forth the 
intruder, reckless — as all such women are — of con- 
sequences, forgetful of mercy, oblivious to justice. 

After that there comes a time in my life, the 
memory of which I should like to blot out — a time 
when I lived utterly alone, working hard it is true, 
and maintaining my wife and family, but leading a 
godless, hopeless, desperate sort of existence, un- 
cheered by a single ray of light. 

I made money for the only time in my recollec- 
tion faster than I wanted it — I had to send away 
briefs — I had to turn a deaf ear to the solicitations 
of publishers. Fame came to me also ; I climbed 
high in my profession ; I wrote works which were 
eagerly sought after— outsiders, I doubt not, envied 


CONCLUSION. 


27 i 

me my success, ay, and perhaps grudged it too, but 
they need not have done so. If the fruit were fair, 
there was rottenness at the core ; go where I would, 
do what I might, I could never get that night out 
of my mind when I found the poor child sitting in 
a common street cab, sobbing because she had been 
so evilly treated by the woman it was my misfor- 
tune to call wife. 

I took the matter to heart as I have never taken 
anything since, as I never shall anything again. I 
brooded over it— I mourned about it — I had such 
an impotent yearning agony in my soul at times, 
that it seemed to me I could not live, remember- 
ing why Rose had died. And then I used to think 
Oh ! if I had only gone to see her again even in 
her coffin,^^ but I could not have done it. After 
that hour, when I saw her lying senseless in her 
husband s house, I do not think wild horses could 
have drawn me up those stairs ' to look at his wife 
once more. 

To this day, however, I could not describe the 
precise sort of feeling I entertained for Rose during 
that last part of our acquaintanceship. It was one 
I should certainly have been neither afraid nor 
ashamed to analyze for the benefit of any one, 
had analysis been possible, and yet it darkened my 
life more certainly than even the tender passion of 
my boyhood. 

In the twilight she seemed to come back to me 
with her soft gentle ways, her sweet loveliness, her 
tender grace of manner, tone, and movement, and T 


272 


MV LAST LOVE. 


felt at times as if I should certainly go mad, when 1 
remembered that she walked the earth no more, 
that let time bring what it would, it could never 
bear back upon its cruel waves that which it had 
taken from me — the child — the girl — the woman 
Rose. 

But this is folly, and I must finish. At what 
precise period a doubt as to the justice and recti- 
tude of my own conduct entered my mind, I cannot 
exactly tell, but I think it was one evening as 1 
walked slowly through the Temple, thinking about 
Walter Surry’s harshness, and Walter Surry’s re- 
morse, that it occurred to me, whether the course 
I had adopted was the right one, or whether I had 
in my way not erred almost as much as my wife 
herself in hers. 

I had married the woman — I had vowed to love, 
protect, cherish her, and behold for the sake of 
another, who could never even had she lived been 
aught to me, I cast her oflf, her and the children, 
which were mine also. 

I did not in the least believe what Joan said, 
namely that it was Catherine’s love for me which 
made her pitiless towards Rose, but slowly by ^ure 
and almost imperceptible degrees I came to see that, 
no matter what my wife might have been or might 
have done, I had not been right, and so after a long 
time I went back at last and told her if she were 
willing to forgive and to forget I was willing to do 
likewise. 

‘‘ I did not make sufficient allowance for you/^ I 


CONCLUSION, 


273 


finished, and Catherine never contradicted me. She 
had talked the matter over with her female friends 
till the memory of Rose ailing and weakly driven 
out to die, faded away, and no image remained 
on the canvas of recollection save the fact that 
I had been a great deal too fond of another woman, 
and left my home and family because she died. 

But for all that, Catherine was very glad indeed 
to welcome me back, to condone my misdeeds, and 
to forget her own. We celebrated our reconciliation 
I remember with a dinnerparty, and Catherine wore 
a violet-coloured velvet dress, with which I pre- 
sented her, and looked very handsome indeed, for the 
colour became her admirably. 

After that we had a series of entertainments, and 
the world at length thoroughly understanding I had 
seen the folly of my ways and the wickedness of 
my devices, felt satisfied and received me back into 
its bosom. 

And so the old existence was resumed as though 
nothing had ever occurred to break its monotony, 
and but for the visits which Sir Walter Surry fre- 
([uently paid to the cottage at Southgate I might 
sometimes have been tempted to fancy the whole 
episode a dream — a fantastic vision of my otherwise 
prosaic life. 

Meeting, however, that tall handsome man every 
time I went to see my parents, I could not think 
the past a dream or the present quite satisfactory. 

He is coming after you, Joan, I suppose,” was 
my somewhat irritable remark one afternoon when 


274 


MY LAST LOVE. 


he and I had crossed each other's path once again, 
and though Joan said Nonsense, Tom," I knew 
quite well it was so, and that some day I should 
lose my sister and see her married to the man for 
whose sake she had refused many an eligible offer. 

lie should have married her at first. Joan was 
really the wife Sir Walter Surry wanted, and I know 
now he is far happier with her than he ever was 
with the ewe lamb he took from me, merely because, 
as it sometimes seems to my imagination, I was so 
poor that I had only one thing in all the earth 
which appeared valuable in my eyes. 

It came to marrying of course ultimately. He 
proposed, and Joan accepted, and when the wedding 
took place I attended it in lieu of my father, then 
growing old and infirm, and gave the bride away. 

But we have never visited — never been intimate in 
our acquaintanceship — Joan is now, as I have said, 
a very great lady, and her way and mine do not lie 
together. She says this divergence is my fault and 
of my seeking, but I do not quite agree with this. 

I think my path began to diverge from that of 
most people when my life was thrown out of gear 
the morning I saw Rose walk out of church Walter 
Surry's wife. 

And thjs is all my story which I began to tell sp 
long ago, and am only after months and months able 
to finish to-night. There is not much in it. For 
a moment I drop my pen and recall the few in- 
cidents it contains : a child standing by the water's 
edge, a girl listening to a love tale, apple blossoms 


CONCLUSION. 


m 


strewing the grass her dear feet press, two most 
happy wandering together side by side, two most 
wretched cast out of their paradise, two meeting 
once more after years of separation, two parting 
till Eternity. Here lies the miniature of my first 
love; there hangs the portrait of my last, and yet 
they are both the likenesses of one and the same 
person, for I never have had but one love in all my 
life, and I never shall have another till the skeleton 
rider comes to f^-tch me from brief and book. 


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154. PIightDays. By R. E. P’orrest 50 


WILL SHORTLY APPEAR. 

1.55. The Heart of a Maid. By 

Heatrice Kiplmg 

1.56. The Heir Presuaiptive and 

Heir Apparent. By Mrs. 



Oli pliant 

.50 

1 57. 

In the Heart of the Storm. 



By .Maxwell Grav 

An Old .Maid’s Love. By 

50 

1.58. 



Maarten Maarteiis 

50 

1.59. 

There Is No Death. Bv 



Florence Marryat 

50 

160. 

The Soul of Countess 
Adrian. By Mrs Camp- 



bell-Praed 

50 

161. 

For the Defense. By B. 



L. Farjeon 

50 

162. 

Sunny Stories and So.aik 



Shady' Ones. By J. Payne 

50 

163. 

Eric Brlghtoyes. 11. Rider 



Haggard 

5l 



HOTEL, New York. A rrrarvel of luxurv 
and comfort. A most desirable cool and 
(lelightful Hotel, for Spring and Sum- 
mer visitors. Located in the heart of 
New York City, at 5th Avenue and 58th 
and 59th Streets, and overlooking Cen- 
tral Park and Plaza Square. Convenient 
to places of amusement and stores, 
Fifth Avenue stages, cross-town and Belt 
line horse cars pass t^^e doors. Terminal 
station Sixth Avenue Elevated Road 
within half a block. The Hotel is abso- 
lutely fire-proof. Conducted on American 
and European plans. Summer rates. 

F. A. Hammond. 


nURR/IY HILL HOTEI 



Park Avenue. 40th and 41st S 

NEW YORK. 

HUNTING HAMMOND. 


I OCATED one block from Grand Central 
L. tion. A Hotel of superior exccllenc 
both the American and European plans, 
occupies the highest grade in New Ycrk, ai 
the healthiest of locations. 

FOR TRANSIENT GUESTS, 

Tourist Travelers, or as a Residence 
Families, no Healthier or Pleasanter pla 
can be found in New York City. 


Patrons of the Murray Hill Hotel 1 
their Baggage Transferred to and from 
Grand Central Station Free of Charge. 


LOVELL bWnONb ^TCLEi 

I , I 



$85 Strictly High Gradi 


FOUR STYLES, 1891 MODELS, 


LADIES AND GENTV 


Lovell’s BOYS’ and GIRLS’ Safety, 
PRICE, S35. 

BICYCLE CATALOGUE FREE. 


JOHN P. LOVELL ARMS CG 


MANUFACTURERS, 

147 Washington Street, | 

BOSTON, MAS i 


Everybody’s Ty^iewriter. * For Young and Ole 


Price, $15.00^1^ $20j00. 


live agents wanted. 


SEND FOR FULL PARTICULARS. 


Send 6c. in Stamps for 1 00 Page Illustrated Sporting Goods Catalogi 


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